Faculty

Amaro J. Laria, PhD

University of Massachusetts Boston, 1997
Dr. Laria is a clinical psychologist with primary expertise in the areas of: behavioral medicine, culture and mental health, and trauma and dissociation. He has been on the MSPP faculty since 2003 and teaches Cross-Cultural Psychology and Clinical Hypnosis. He is founder and director of the "Medical Consultation and Multicultural Competence Training Program," a MSPP internship housed at the Joseph M. Smith Community Health Center in Allston and Waltham, that involves training in primary care mental health and multicultural competence. Dr. Laria also holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He has conducted research in the following areas: somatization among Latino immigrant patients in primary care, dissociative experiences among Cuban spiritist mediums and mental health patients, "ataque de nervios" (attack of "nerves") among Puerto Rican patients, and alternative health beliefs and practices among Latinos in the U.S. His most recent publication is titled "Issues in the Assessment and Treatment of Latino Patients" (in "Cultural Psychiatry for Clinicians: A Handbook for Working with Diverse Patients" by R. Lim, in press, 2004). Dr. Laria also has a private practice in Brookline and Cambridge.

Updated 9/17/07