12.16.2020

Dianna Rehn, Doctor of Psychology, is a clinician with the Anchorage adult outpatient (Folker) team. She’s in her second stint at ACMHS – she worked here for 10 months about 4 years ago, and now has been here for a ayear. In between, she worked at API doing forensic competency evaluations – which sometimes involved testifying in court. (She does not miss that part.)

Currently, Dianna is ACMHS’s only adult clinician who can bill Medicare. She’s been seeing a lot of clients with severe depression and/or anxiety, and finds it rewarding to work with people and see them make changes to come out of that dark place and begin functioning better in the community. When someone arrives in crisis, even the difference after a one-hour session can be significant.

Dianna is one of the first ACMHS clinicians becoming certified in CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) through the Beck Institute. She’s completed all of the coursework, and working on supervision requirements. It has sparked new ideas about things to try when working with clients.

Fun Facts:

Dianna originally wanted to be a physician, but a high school assignment to assess the characters in Margaret Atwood’s book Cat’s Eye using the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) turned her on to psychology.

She came to Alaska as part of the Alaska Psychology Internship Consortium ( https://www.ak-pic.org/). Her favorite part of that experience was spending a week in a rural village.  She ended up staying after meeting her future-husband here.

She roots for the University of Michigan, volunteers at a cat shelter and likes to watch movies.  And I saved the best for last: Dianna attended the same Chicago-area high school as David Hasselhof. Yes: THE David Hasselhof. (But she’s much younger so they weren’t there at the same time.)

 

Updated, June 2020