Clinical Co-Director

Dr. Porterfield received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1998, where she specialized in Child Clinical Psychology. She received a fellowship at the University of Michigan to focus her clinical and research training on the needs of children who have suffered loss, either through death, divorce, or other trauma. Dr. Porterfield was a postdoctoral fellow at the NYU Child Study Center. In her work at Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture since 1999, Dr. Porterfield has developed an outreach program to schools and other agencies serving children in the New York Metropolitan area to publicize the needs of youth traumatized by war. She provides individual and family therapy to children and supervises trainees working with survivors of torture in the Bellevue Program. She has also presented extensively in the New York area and nationally on topics such as the effects of war and refugee trauma on children, clinical work with traumatized refugee families, and the psychological effects of torture.