Dr. Diaz provides psychological services to adults and children, serving diverse communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. She helps adults with mental health issues and young children (0 – 5 years old) with emotional and behavioral difficulties that interfere with normal development. Dr. Diaz also has comprehensive training and experience supporting parents, often trauma survivors themselves, with the challenges of raising children who are impacted by trauma and loss.

Dr. Diaz’s work focuses on supporting at-risk pregnant women who are transitioning from pregnancy to motherhood and are vulnerable to problems bonding with their infants. She has received extensive clinical training in perinatal depression and anxiety and coauthored a depression prevention program for at-risk pregnant women: The Mothers and Babies Course: A Reality Management Approach, developed at UCSF. This preventive program has been implemented nationally and internationally with high-risk pregnant women in diverse community settings.

Child-Parent Psychotherapy is a relationship-based treatment approach that is proven effective in helping young children who have suffered trauma, along with their parents/caregivers, in moving toward recovery. Dr. Diaz completed her pre- and postdoctoral training at the UCSF Child Trauma Research Program (CTRP) with Dr. Alicia Lieberman and Dr. Patricia Van Horn, both of whom are experts in the field of trauma and infant mental health.

Dr. Diaz also served as the primary clinician, supervisor, and trainer for UCSF–CTRP Healthy Pregnancy, Healthy Motherhood: The Pregnancy Project, the goal of which is to adapt Child-Parent Psychotherapy to the perinatal period. She is a co-author of a manual for Perinatal Child-Parent Psychotherapy titled, “Make Room for Baby,” which details a preventive and treatment intervention for trauma during pregnancy and postpartum.

Dr. Diaz has worked as a consultant to various Bay Area community agencies, along with federally funded research projects focusing on immigrant women’s mental health. Her doctoral clinical and research training was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Diaz has participated in several longitudinal bilingual (English and Spanish) investigations conducting prevention and treatment outcome research with pregnant women who are at risk for depression and traumatized child-parent dyads. Her own personal and professional experiences across cultures have contributed to her profound understanding of the influence of culture and society on mental illness and wellness. She uses a holistic approach to mental wellness, one that honors individual differences while supporting a person’s innate resilience and strengths.