Sara Levine Kornfield PhD

Dr. Kornfield is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in reproductive psychology. Her research focuses primarily on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during pregnancy and the development of a brief psychotherapeutic treatment that can be delivered in primary care or prenatal care settings. Her interests lie in the study of physiological arousal regulation and the treatment of PTSD in pregnancy with the specific goal of targeting subjective arousal symptoms and objective physiological measures of arousal with a brief trauma-focused therapy. Dr. Kornfield's goal is to improve quality of life for pregnant patients and decrease adverse pregnancy outcomes which are common in traumatized populations.

Prior to joining the Department of Psychiatry and the Healthy Minds Lab at Wash U, Dr. Kornfield was the Director of the Maternal Wellness Initiative (MWI) at the University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine, Center for Women's Behavioral Wellness. The MWI is a perinatal care-mental health integration program which seeks to enhance health care service delivery in obstetrical settings for pregnant and postpartum women with mental health problems. At Wash U, Dr. Kornfield works with the Perinatal Behavioral Health Service and provides clinical consultation and ongoing psychotherapy related to women’s reproductive health.