Dr. Melissa Houser is a registered clinical psychologist practicing with children, adolescents, adults, and families. She has a Ph.D. in Counselling Psychology from the University of Denver. Dr. Houser has worked in a variety of settings and across levels of care. She relocated to Canada for her predoctoral internship at McMaster Children’s Hospital. For her postdoctoral fellowship, she worked at The Hospital for Sick Children, where she developed a passion for working with adolescents with eating disorders and published research related to characteristics of AN versus ARFID in young children. She concurrently worked at Broadview Psychology, deepening the Dialectical Behaviour Therapy training that she had started during her internship. She was also the clinical lead in the Adolescent Eating Disorder Program at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences.
One of the things that keeps psychological practice interesting is that there are always new things to learn and new therapies to explore. Dr. Houser’s recent focus has been on treating eating disorders, emotional dysregulation, and disorders of overcontrol. Dr. Houser has spent the last 4 years training in Radically Open Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (RO DBT) and was selected as one of 12 Radically Open Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Scholars for 2024-2026, which allows for even more in-depth training in RO DBT! Dr. Houser primarily provides treatment using RO DBT, DBT, and FBT. She also has experience with yoga-based interventions, Family Systems Therapy, IFS, and bottom-up approaches to trauma.
In sessions, you can expect Dr. Houser to be warm and empathic, use humour, and actively encourage you to practice using the skills in the moment. In her free time, you’ll find her practicing Ashtanga yoga, hanging out with her family, reading a good book, and trying new things.