Joan Friebely, Ed.D.
Dr. Friebely received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Stanford University and Northeastern University. She carried her interest in story-telling and language into cognitive and narrative approaches to psychotherapy in her first career. She was a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, working with individuals, couples, and groups at Cambridge Mental Health Associates. This experience, and raising two daughters, promoted her interest in research. She went back to school to study human development at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her dissertation was on the social construction of parenting. After that, she did research at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Psychiatry Department, on hormonal influences on women’s mood, sleep, sexuality, and cognition. At the Center for Child and Health Policy, she has been doing research on tobacco control in the pediatric office setting. She is also developing projects on the effects of children on parents.
