Areas of clinical practice:
SLU at Fred Hutch Cancer Center and UW Diabetes Institute
My passion and background are working with individuals with serious medical conditions, primarily cancer but also other chronic health conditions. I split my clinical time between FHCC and UW Diabetes Institute. I also passionate about conducting research about existential distress and post-traumatic growth in oncology.
Clinical Approach:
I practice an interpersonal approach to psychotherapy, rather than solely structured one. I enjoy building a collaborative relationship with my patients to identify goals to work on in therapy. I really want our time together to be worthwhile. There’s only so much time and energy someone with a major illness has. I am a big fan of the spoon theory and don’t want to be wasting their spoons. I love to use humor, metaphor and stories. I also find it important to provide space and opportunities to discuss heavier topics related to prognosis, morality, grief and legacy. I enjoy supporting patients with meaning making and trying to answer difficult questions such as “What’s the meaning of all this? How can we help patients live well with what life is remaining?”
Personal History:
I have a small, supportive family with my partner and our dog. Growing up, I was close with my grandparents. My grandfather who lived with Parkinson’s disease for most of my life. Parkinson’s has a lot of physical symptoms, but also mood symptoms. Additionally, he also lived with chronic melanoma and prostate cancer. His health had a large impact on his life, our family, and how I now view quality of life during treatment and at end of life. He always faced challenges and changes in his functioning with humor and creative to continue to engage in active he enjoyed like travel, golf and a fancy meal. Around the time I started graduate school for psychology, he passed away. His legacy influenced me work with people who were living with serious medical conditions or acquired new disability. I want to help patients live with it instead of against it.
I am a bilingual, bicultural psychiatrist with interests in cultural psychiatry, psychotherapy, trauma-informed care, and improving quality of care and safety for our patients/families that receive care in a language other than English and other underserved communities.
I joined the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry faculty at the University of Washington in Fall of 2022 after completing my Child and Adolescent Psychiatry training here at the University of Washington at Seattle Children’s Hospital and General Psychiatry SUNY Upstate Medical University, with emphasis in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Trauma Focused- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
I am an Acting Assistant Professor and licensed clinical psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. I received my Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and completed by postdoctoral training at the University of Washington. I am also a consultant for multiple teaching and implementation projects aimed helping community mental health providers deliver effective evidence-based trauma-informed care.
My career goal is to help survivors of complex trauma learn to thrive. My research and clinical work explores how mobile technology, principles of evidence-based practice, and our sociocultural context can be used to help survivors of trauma and their communities recover faster. My work specifically emphasizes recovery from complex racial trauma and other forms of identity-based trauma.
My scholarship is dedicated to reducing behavioral health disparities in Indigenous, immigrant and refugee communities. I have 13 years of experience and expertise in community-based participatory research (CBPR) science and practice, mixed-methods multi-level research design, cultural adaptation and translation of evidenced based interventions and culture-based practices, survey and measurement development, and dissemination and translation of findings. I am interested in examining culture-centered, land-based healing practices and mechanisms in addressing substance use, sexual health, and climate change impact.
Dr. Walukevich-Dienst (hear my name) is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington.
Her research is focused on identifying psychosocial and contextual factors associated with alcohol and cannabis misuse and co-use among young adults, including social influences (e.g., romantic partners, use partnerships), affect management motives, co-occurring mental health concerns, and high-risk substance use events and contexts.
Dr. Walukevich-Dienst aims to leverage this information to develop and test innovative, technology-informed prevention and intervention efforts to disseminate in real world settings.
She also provides psychotherapy to patients at the University of Washington’s Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic and provides supervision and training to psychology graduate students and psychiatry residents in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Link to Dr. Walukevich-Dienst’s CV.
Dr. Prater holds a doctorate in public health from the Ohio State University, with a focus in health services research, pragmatic intervention development and policy evaluation. Her work focuses on understanding the circumstances around firearm suicide among vulnerable populations and developing health systems interventions for suicide prevention through firearm safety. Using a public health lens, she works on tailoring interventions to meet the unique needs of vulnerable populations (e.g. dementia, terminal illness) at increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. She is currently funded by the National Institutes on Aging and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to produce clinical decision-making tools to help persons with early dementia, their care partners, and primary clinicians, to make safer plans for firearm storage.
I am a child and adolescent psychiatrist with interests in medical education, infant and early childhood mental health, and psychotherapy. I direct psychotherapy training for child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) fellows, co-lead the CAP fellows’ didactic curriculum, and coordinate the CAP training experiences of general psychiatry residents.
My clinical work includes treatment in the outpatient setting for young children through adolescents, working closely with their families. In my own work, and in teaching trainees, I am passionate about psychiatrists supporting families comprehensively. I seek to use not only medications (if appropriate) but also behavioral/psychotherapeutic approaches.
My research focuses on expanding behavioral treatments for young children by involving peer supports—caregivers who have previously participated in the programs for their own children—as members of the care team. I am especially interested in this increasing access and fit of the treatment for underserved communities, and currently work in partnership with the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic.
Dr. Blayney’s research aims to understand the risks for and consequences of sexual victimization. More specifically, this work centers around how social contexts influence sexual victimization risk as well as variation in post-victimization recovery, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, alcohol use, and sexual risk behaviors.
