Sandra Levy

Dr. Sandra Levy is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in Providence, RI with over 30 years of experience.  She has expertise in undergraduate and graduate student mental health, and works with multiple sectors of the university community, including faculty, staff and post-graduate fellows.  She enjoys seeing international students as well as students from differing socio-economic, ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds.  Dr. Levy has extensive experience treating adults across the age range from diverse walks of life.  She specializes in anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, trauma, relationships, grief and loss, life transitions, LGBTQ+ topics and issues of race, culture and ethnicity.

Dr. Levy offers in-depth individual psychotherapy.  Her core training and orientations are relational, psychoanalytic and psychodynamic.  She helps people to understand historical roots of their current difficulties and see how they are repeating self-defeating patterns.  She then encourages them to choose more productive ways of being and behaving.  Dr. Levy collaborates with her clients to make sense of their lives and expand their self-awareness; she promotes self-reflection and attunement to their emotions.  She utilizes the therapist-client relationship as a tool to gain important insights and move the therapeutic process forward.  Dr. Levy believes that through genuine connection, affirmation and her ability to reflect her clients back to themselves, they can experience important insights and a deep feeling of being understood that helps them heal and grow.

She incorporates family systems and developmental perspectives, trauma therapy, cognitive behavioral techniques, attachment theory, relaxation, guided imagery and mindfulness practices as indicated to assist with coping, skill building and the achievement of therapeutic goals.

Dr. Levy also provides couples therapy focused on improving communication, navigating parenthood, improving emotional intimacy and working through difficult events or ongoing family challenges.

She has worked in intensive inpatient settings in the Yale Medical School system and elsewhere and is knowledgeable about the treatment of profound mental illness as well as trauma.  In addition, Dr. Levy completed a two-year Post Graduate Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP). She has served on the board of Rhode Island Association for Psychoanalytic Psychologies (RIAPP) for seven years in the capacities of Continuing Education Coordinator, Program Coordinator, Liaison to the American Psychological Association, President, and Past President.  She looks forward to meeting you.