Dr Anne O’Boyle

 

Dr Anne O’Boyle  (Associate)

Chartered Clinical Psychologist and EMDR Therapist

DClinPsychol, MSc, BSc (Hons) Psych, C.Psychol PsSI

 

Early Career and Training

Anne is a specialist clinical psychologist with a broad range of experience working with adults, families, children and adolescents. Anne completed a three year doctorate clinical psychology training programme at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to her clinical training, she completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at Maynooth University and a Master’s degree in Applied Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. 

During Anne’s doctorate training, she specialised in adult mental health. She has completed a range of additional specialist training including Compassion Focused Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness and Behaviour Family Therapy. Over the past six years, Anne has focused on developing her therapeutic skills in Compassion Focused Therapy. She has attended various training courses and she has received expert supervision in CFT which enables her to provide high quality, evidence based, psychological intervention. 

Anne is committed to providing her clients with safe and effective trauma-focused care. She completed Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) training in 2022.  She is currently receiving specialist supervision for this work and is working towards full EMDR accreditation.

Clinical Experience 

Prior to joining EBTC, Anne worked as a Clinical Psychologist within the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland in adult mental health settings and as a highly specialist Clinical Psychologist in a clinical health psychology service.  

Anne has experience working in an adult mental health psychological therapies team working with clients who had complex mental health difficulties.   In this role, she provided specialist psychological assessment and intervention to people with a range of psychological difficulties and distress.  She has experience of providing evidence-based psychological assessment and intervention to people with a variety of mental health needs and a range of presenting problems such as anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, adjustment disorders, social anxiety, health anxiety, perfectionism, low self-esteem, eating disorders, bi-polar disorder, complex trauma, PTSD, traumatic experiences, childhood neglect,  emotion regulation difficulties and interpersonal difficulties. 

Specialist Expertise: Clinical Health Psychology 

Anne has a special interest and experience working with people who experience psychological distress and have co-morbid physical health problems, in particular adjustment to long term conditions. Clinical health psychology is a specialist area focused on providing psychological support to clients who are experiencing psychological difficulties associated with an ongoing medical condition or it’s treatment. Clients are often in contact with medical specialties and would benefit from a clinical health psychology component to their multidisciplinary care. Presenting problems can include but are not limited to; psychological distress, low mood, anxiety, health anxiety, difficulty adhering to self-management, cognitive impairment, relationship issues, post traumatic symptoms, adjustment to conditions such as functional neurological disorder, Parkinson’s disease, MS, fatigue, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, ulcerative colitis, IBS, kidney disease and cancer. 

Anne provides a holistic approach which includes a comprehensive psychological assessment of physical health and the impact on functioning. This assessment informs a biopsychosocial understanding of the current difficulties. A biopsychosocial approach considers the biological, psychological and social factors that can contribute to our health and well-being.  Psychological intervention is a holistic approach, moving away from a biomedical model towards a biopsychosocial model of self-management, adjusting to and living with a physical health condition. In addition to one to one therapeutic work, Anne is experienced providing psychological intervention to couples, families and carers. She has experience of working with people across the lifespan which means she can adapt interventions as required. 

Service Development

Anne worked as a Senior Clinical Psychologist within a Clinical Health Psychology service in NHS Scotland.  She has experience of delivering psychological skills and health behaviour change training and coaching to other health professionals to enable them to implement psychological skills in their practice. Anne is passionate about sharing psychological knowledge and skills with others through teaching, training and supervision. She is available to provide supervision, training or consultation to psychologists, health care professionals and community groups.

Anne led and supervised a pilot project in primary care providing brief Cognitive Behaviour therapy (CBT) to clients with long term physical health conditions and mild-moderate depression and/or anxiety. 

Anne participated in a multi-disciplinary rehabilitation programme designed to help support patients and their loved ones after an intensive care stay (Intensive Care Syndrome: Promoting Independence and Return to Employment, InS:PIRE).

Therapeutic Approach 

Anne spends time developing a shared understanding of a client’s difficulties and she works collaboratively to tailor interventions so that clients can work on what is most important to them. Her aim is to provide a space for people to explore their life experiences to date and to recognise coping strategies that are working well in a person’s life, while also considering what the person may like to be different so that they can work together to consider alternative, more helpful coping strategies. 

Anne draws on a range of evidence based therapeutic models such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) , Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Mindfulness. Anne also provides Behaviour Family Therapy (BFT) to families and couples. 

Overall, she offers an integrative approach combining the evidence base with clinical experience which enables her to adapt psychological intervention to each individual clients needs to promote positive outcomes. 

Memberships 

Anne is a Chartered Psychologist with the Psychological Society of Ireland (Ps.S.I)

She is also a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with the British Psychological Society (BPS) and a member of the Division of Clinical Psychology in the UK. She is also registered with the Health and Social Care Professions Council (HCPC) in the UK. 

Media

Below is a link to an article in the Irish Times that Anne contributed her expertise to:

How to love your body again after a serious illness or injury