Dr. Nehjla Mashal, PhD, ABPP, is a licensed clinical psychologist, Board Certified in Cognitive and Behavioral Psychology, specializing in evidence-based psychotherapies for anxiety, depression, and trauma in teens and adults at Pacific Anxiety Group. She is also interested in assertiveness and effective communication strategies, diversity and intersectionality, and the relationship between anxiety and interpersonal functioning.
Dr. Mashal received her B.A. in Psychology from UCLA and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University. She has served as a study therapist on a randomized controlled trial of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for generalized anxiety disorder and a pilot study of problem-solving therapy (PST) for anxiety disorders. Dr. Mashal had a dual appointment as a postdoctoral fellow at the Sierra Pacific Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Centers (MIRECC) at VA Palo Alto Health Care System and at Stanford University School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Dr. Mashal has extensive training in CBT, Problem Solving Therapy (PST), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Behavioral Activation (BA), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), and applied tension and exposure for blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia. Dr. Mashal provides clinical supervision to trainees, communicates evidence-based psychotherapy strategies to the public, and occasionally coauthors academic journal articles. Her writing has also appeared in Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Money, Popsugar, and her online lifestyle magazine, moxieandcandor.com.