Dr. Saunia Ahmad, Ph.D., Psych
Director & Clinical Psychologist
Toronto Psychology Clinic
Languages: Dr. Ahmad provides services in English, Hindi, and Urdu.
Education and Training
Dr. Ahmad is registered as a Clinical, Counselling and Health Psychologist with the College of Psychologists of Ontario. She has over 10 years of experience providing individual, couple and group therapy using evidence-base approaches.
Dr. Saunia Ahmad completed her MA/ Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at York University, Toronto, Canada. During both her masters and doctoral program, she was awarded the Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). This scholarship is awarded to top-tier graduate students and was awarded for her research on couples therapy and cultural sensitivity in psychotherapy.
Prior to starting the Toronto Psychology Clinic, Dr. Ahmad trained and worked in a diverse range of settings that include the York University Psychology Training Clinic (YUPC), the Borderline Personality Disorder Clinic at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), and the inpatient and outpatient mental health departments at North York General Hospital in Toronto as well as State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York.
Most recently, Dr. Ahmad was a Clinical Psychologist at the Odette Cancer Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre where she provided counselling and support to patients, couples and families coping with cancer. She also worked with an interdisciplinary team to study factors that support couples coping with cancer. This research was funded by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF). She was an associate at Dr. Serine Warwar & Associates (now called Centre for Emotion-Focused Therapy). She also trained and supervised graduate students worked at the York University Psychology Clinic (YUPC) in psychotherapy, psychological assessment. She worked as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Toronto where she provides executive health assessments.
Theoretical Approach
Dr. Ahmad's approach to psychotherapy integrates techniques and theory from several well-researched and highly recommended approaches in which she has extensive training in. She continues to stay up to date on new developments in each of these approaches. This includes the following:
- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) (trained in the BPD program at CAMH)
- Mindulfness
- Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT)
- Family systems theory
- Contemporary psychodynamic
- Social constructivist and Narrative approaches
