Training, Credentials & Research

Training, credentials, and research

Most “About” pages list institutions in chronological order and hope the reader fills in the rest. This page does name the institutions, because that is part of how you would reasonably decide whether to entrust your child or yourself to a clinician you have not met. But the institutions are not what the training was. The training was the rotations: the specific clinical settings I sat in, the supervisors who supervised which decisions, and what each of those rooms taught me to look for. That is what is on this page.

I am a US-trained clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, predoctoral internship at UT Health San Antonio, postdoctoral fellowship at Mayo Clinic, doctoral rotations at Duke University, and earlier research training at Temple University. The lineage matters because it is the lineage I draw on every clinical day.

Postdoctoral fellowship, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

APA-accredited Clinical Child Psychology Fellowship, 2019–2021. Five major rotations across the full severity spectrum.

  • Pediatric Anxiety Disorders Clinic. Assessment and exposure-based treatment for childhood anxiety and OCD. Led the 5-day intensive Parent-Coached Exposure Therapy (PCET) programme. Co-developed the Mayo Clinic Anxiety Coach and Cooperation Coach apps, still in clinical use.
  • Child & Adolescent Inpatient Hospitalization Unit. Psychologist on an acute inpatient psychiatric unit. Consultation, behavioural intervention, safety planning, and treatment rounds within a multidisciplinary team.
  • Pediatric Transitions Program (PTP). A family-based, DBT-informed two-week partial hospitalisation programme for youth with complex mood and behavioural difficulties.
  • Consultation–Liaison (C/L) Service. Psychological support across paediatric hospital specialties: hematology/oncology, neurology (including POTS), ICU, NICU, surgery, and critical care.
  • Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Center (PPRC). Intensive outpatient programme for chronic pain, autonomic dysfunction, somatoform, and conversion disorders.
  • Pediatric Mood Disorders Clinic. Diagnostic clarification and treatment for complex mood presentations in youth.

Ongoing outpatient therapy caseload and protected research time throughout. The Mayo benchmark (careful, integrated, multidisciplinary) is what I aim for on any given clinical day in private practice.

Predoctoral internship, UT Health San Antonio

APA-accredited, Cognitive Behavioral Track, 2018–2019.

  • Primary Care Behavioral Health (PCBH). Robert Brady Green Hospital, Department of Family & Community Medicine. Supervised by Dr. Stacy Ogbeide (PsyD, ABPP). Integrated behavioural health consultation for paediatric and adult populations within a primary care medical setting.
  • Adolescent & Psychiatric Intensive Care Units. San Antonio State Hospital. Individual and group therapy (CBT, DBT, motivational interviewing). Suicide risk assessment and behavioural tracking systems for adolescent inpatients with serious mental illness.
  • Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) & ADVANCE Clinics. PCIT-trained. Dyadic behavioural intervention for externalising behaviours in children ages 2–7.

Doctoral training, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

APA & PCSAS accredited. Ph.D. 2019, M.A. 2014. Doctoral mentor: Dr. Eric Youngstrom, one of the field’s leading thinkers on probabilistic assessment and diagnostic decision-making.

  • Center for Autism and Brain Development, Duke University. Autism assessment, individual and family therapy, infant-toddler diagnostic interviewing, and early behavioural intervention. Rotation under Dr. Jill Lorenzi in Dr. Geraldine Dawson’s group, with regular seminars led by Dr. Dawson.
  • Anxiety Disorders Clinic. Supervised by Dr. Jonathan Abramowitz. Anxiety disorder evaluations and individual CBT/exposure therapy for OCD, social phobia, panic disorder, and generalised anxiety.
  • Child and Adult Psychological Assessment Services. Full-battery assessment for mood disorders, developmental disorders, learning disabilities, ADHD, and diagnostic clarification. Supervised by Dr. Jennifer Youngstrom.
  • Center for Excellence in Eating Disorders (CEED). UNC Hospitals. Comprehensive eating-disorder evaluations, individual CBT and DBT, and twice-weekly DBT group therapy for adolescents and adults.
  • Central Regional Hospital. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Unit. Level 1 state psychiatric hospital. Assessment and therapy for youth with serious mental illness.
  • East Chapel Hill High School. School-based individual and family therapy, parent training, and classroom observation.

Research experience, Temple University

In Dr. Lauren Alloy’s Mood and Cognition Lab at Temple University (approximately 1.5 years as a research assistant), I learned how depression and anxiety get studied at the level of rigour the field requires before a result is worth trusting. Hypothesis-led, sceptical of my own first reading. That sensibility has stayed with me, and it shows up in how I think about a clinical formulation.

Research on bipolar spectrum disorders, BAS sensitivity, mood-cognition interactions, self-injury prediction, and sleep disturbance. Multiple peer-reviewed publications and national conference presentations.

Advanced training

Currently in progress. A few things I am actively working toward: becoming an SRP-approved supervisor, which will let me train and supervise provisionally registered psychologists here in Singapore; certification in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT); and certification in CBIT (Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics) through the Tourette Association of America. I will update this page as each is formally completed.

My parent-child behavioural and PCIT training was deepened under the supervision of Dr. Tabatha Blount at UT Health San Antonio, a PCIT International trainer, during my internship there. It built on earlier parent-management training with Jennifer Youngstrom and Deborah Jones at UNC, whose work sits closely alongside Rex Forehand’s foundational research in parent training.

  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Training with Dr. Kirk Strosahl, co-creator of ACT.
  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Continuing education with Dr. Marsha Linehan, creator of DBT.
  • Family-Focused Therapy for Bipolar Disorder. Symposia with Dr. David Miklowitz, developer of the family-focused therapy model.

Research and publications

My research focuses on improving how clinicians assess and treat mental-health conditions across the lifespan. Four threads run through the work: evidence-based assessment, mood disorder measurement, ADHD across the lifespan, and making psychological science openly accessible.

Selected publications

Ong, M. L., & Leffler, J. M. (2021). Implementing a psychology consultation model on an inpatient psychiatric hospital unit. Child Psychiatry & Human Development.

Whiteside, S. P. H., Biggs, B. K., et al., Ong, M. L., et al. (2024). Parent-coached exposure therapy versus cognitive behavior therapy for childhood anxiety disorders. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 104, 102877. [PubMed] · [DOI]

Ong, M. L., Reuman, L., Youngstrom, E. A., & Abramowitz, J. S. (2020). Discriminative validity of the Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale for separating OCD from anxiety disorders. Assessment, 27(3), 478–490. [PubMed] · [DOI]

Youngstrom, E. A., et al., Ong, M. L., et al. (2017). Evidence-based assessment as an integrative model for applying psychological science to guide the voyage of treatment. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 24(4), 331–363. [DOI]

Ong, M. L., Youngstrom, E. A., et al. (2017). Comparing the CASI-4R and the PGBI-10M for differentiating bipolar spectrum disorders. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 45, 611–623. [PubMed] · [DOI]

Additional publications in Cognition and Emotion, Behavior Therapy, Psychiatry Research, and other peer-reviewed journals.

View all publications on Google Scholar → · ResearchGate profile →

Peer review

Ad-hoc reviewer for Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, Journal of School Psychology, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, and the North Carolina Psychological Association.

HGAPS, Helping Give Away Psychological Science

I co-founded HGAPS, a US-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to making evidence-based psychological science freely accessible worldwide. Through partnerships with NAMI, DBSA, and SCCAP (APA Division 53), HGAPS has developed open-access screening tools used more than 35,000 times. Funded by APA, SCCAP, and APS. Visit HGAPS →

Professional leadership and service

  • SCCAP Executive Board, APA Division 53. Student Representative, 2016–2018. Served alongside Dr. Steve Lee, Dr. Mitch Prinstein, Dr. Eric Youngstrom, Dr. Mary Fristad, Dr. Dick Abidin, and Dr. Amanda Jensen-Doss, among others.
  • Diversity Committee, UNC Chapel Hill. Member.
  • APA Presidential Citation, Citizen Psychologist (2019). First graduate student in APA history to receive this recognition.

Peer review and professional registration in Singapore

I am a review member for the Singapore Register of Psychologists (SRP) under the Singapore Psychological Society. That means I sit on the panel that evaluates other psychologists’ credentials when they apply to the registry. You can verify my SPS membership and SRP registration directly.

Selected press and speaking

Singapore Global Network, January 2025. Featured as a neurodivergent psychologist working to widen access to good mental-health care in Singapore.

If you would like to talk before booking, the free 15-minute Meet & Greet via /book/ is the easiest place to start. /clinical-fit/ walks through how I think about who I am the right person for, and who I am not.