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Melissa Freizinger, PhD

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Melissa is the Associate Director of the Eating Disorder Program in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine (AYAM) and the Department of Psychiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) and an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Freizinger received her doctoral degree in counseling psychology from Northeastern University. She completed her pre-doctoral training at Laurelwood Hospital in Cleveland where she studied Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) approaches to eating disorders. Dr. Freizinger also trained at Cambridge Hospital and in the Behavioral Neurology Unit at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Freizinger was the 2006 Murphy Fellow at the Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts Mental Health Center DBT program.

Dr. Freizinger has been a clinician, researcher, and consultant in Boston for over twenty years. She has worked with patients with eating disorders, addictions, personality disorders, and anxiety disorders. She has worked in various settings that include the Behavioral Medicine Department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Two Brattle Center, and the Psychopharmacology Research Unit at Boston University Medical Center. Most recently, Dr. Freizinger has been involved in program development. She created and was the clinical director for several Boston eating disorder treatment programs.

Currently, Dr. Freizinger treats individuals and families in the AYAM outpatient clinic at BCH using Family Based Treatment. She also treats individuals using DBT and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Dr. Freizinger has presented international, national and local workshops and lectures on the topic of eating disorders, eating disorders and college students, and borderline personality disorder and eating disorders. She is published in the areas of eating disorders and infertility, depression in infertile women, binge eating disorder in adolescents, and binge eating disorder in the Caribbean. Her clinical interests include the application of DBT to eating disorders, Atypical Anorexia, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, and Family Based Treatment.