About

Aleta G. Angelosante, PhD, is a clinical psychologist at the NYU Langone Child Study Center, where she specializes in treating anxiety, mood, and related disorders in children, teens, and young adults. She serves as the clinical director of the Anita Saltz Institute for Anxiety and Mood Disorders at the Child Study Center, leading initiatives to provide evidence-based treatment and ensuring the delivery of the most effective care. Her team conducts extensive research, educates peers globally, and has substantial experience in treating young patients and their families, aligning practices with the latest research to provide the highest level of care. Additionally, she is the clinical director of the Evidence Based Treatment Dissemination Center (EBTDC), where she trains clinicians across New York State in delivering high-quality, evidence-based care. Her career in clinical psychology is driven by a desire to help individuals lead more fulfilling lives, with a focus on early intervention to significantly impact a child's future. She emphasizes building trust and rapport with her patients, prioritizing active listening and validation, and employs evidence-based treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), exposure and response prevention (ExRP), and mindfulness interventions to treat conditions including social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, depression, tics, and body-focused repetitive behaviors.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Psychiatry
• Engineering
• Developmental psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Medicine
• Psychotherapist

Selected publications

• Treatment for Anxiety Disorders in Youth: Current Findings for Best Practice

  Psychiatric Annals · 2024 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Clinical psychology
  • Psychiatry

  Taken together, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health disorders, and typically onset in childhood or early adolescence. Left untreated, anxiety disorders in youth can lead to additional psychopathology and decreased overall functioning in adulthood. This article provides a review of recent findings regarding best practices in the psychosocial treatment of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. Special topics, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, parenting, technological advances, and psychopharmacology are also covered. [ Psychiatr Ann . 2024;54(3):e80–e87.]

  PublisherDOI

• School-Based Interventions for Child and Adolescent Anxiety

  Springer eBooks · 2022

  • Psychology
  • Developmental psychology
  • Psychiatry
  PublisherDOI

• Separation Anxiety Disorder

  2013-01-01 · 5 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Clinical features of young children referred for impairing temper outbursts

  2013-11-01

  article

  Abstract Objective: In light of the current controversy about whether severe temper outbursts are diagnostic of mania in young children, we conducted a study to characterize such children, focusing on mania and other mood disorders, emotion regulation, and parental psychiatric history. Methods: Study participants included 51 5–9-year-old children with frequent, impairing outbursts (probands) and 24 non-referred controls without outbursts. Parents completed a lifetime clinical interview about their child, and rated their child's current mood and behavior. Teachers completed a behavior rating scale. To assess emotion regulation, children were administered the Balloons Game, which assesses emotion expressivity in response to frustration, under demands of high and low regulation. Parental lifetime diagnoses were ascertained in blind clinical interviews. Results: No child had bipolar disorder, bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (NOS), or major depression (MDD). The most prevalent disorder was oppositiona...

• Clinical Features of Young Children Referred for Impairing Temper Outbursts

  Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology · 2013-10-29 · 58 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVE: In light of the current controversy about whether severe temper outbursts are diagnostic of mania in young children, we conducted a study to characterize such children, focusing on mania and other mood disorders, emotion regulation, and parental psychiatric history. METHODS: Study participants included 51 5-9-year-old children with frequent, impairing outbursts (probands) and 24 non-referred controls without outbursts. Parents completed a lifetime clinical interview about their child, and rated their child's current mood and behavior. Teachers completed a behavior rating scale. To assess emotion regulation, children were administered the Balloons Game, which assesses emotion expressivity in response to frustration, under demands of high and low regulation. Parental lifetime diagnoses were ascertained in blind clinical interviews. RESULTS: No child had bipolar disorder, bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (NOS), or major depression (MDD). The most prevalent disorder was oppositional defiant disorder (88.2%), followed by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (74.5%), anxiety disorders (49.0%), and non-MDD depressive disorders (33.3%). Eleven probands (21.6%) met criteria for severe mood dysregulation. During the Balloons Game, when there were no demands for self-regulation, children with severe outbursts showed reduced positive expressivity, and also showed significant deficits in controlling negative facial expressions when asked to do so. Anxiety disorders were the only diagnoses significantly elevated in probands' mothers. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, young children with severe temper outbursts do not present with bipolar disorder. Rather, disruptive behavior disorders with anxiety and depressive mood are common. In children with severe outbursts, deficits in regulating emotional facial expressions may reflect deficits controlling negative affect. This work represents a first step towards elucidating mechanisms underlying severe outbursts in young children.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Panic Disorder

  2013-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• School-Based Interventions for Anxiety in Youth

  2011-01-01 · 8 citations

  book-chapter1st author
  PublisherDOI

• Implementation of an Intensive Treatment Protocol for Adolescents With Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia

  Cognitive and Behavioral Practice · 2009-05-22 · 62 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Discriminant Validity and Clinical Utility of the CBCL With Anxiety-Disordered Youth

  Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology · 2005-10-18 · 93 citations

  article

  This study investigated the utility of several scales of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) when diagnosing anxiety disorders in youth. Participants were the mothers and fathers of 130 children (ages 7 to 14; M = 9.61 years, SD = 1.74; 69 boys, 61 girls) who were evaluated at a specialty mental health clinic (100 were referred for treatment; 30 were nonanxious volunteers). For both mothers' and fathers' reports, the highest correlations were found between the Anxious/Depressed subscale and the severity of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD); the second highest relations were between the Withdrawn subscale and the severity of social phobia (SP). Using either mothers' reports or fathers' reports, receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analyses identified cutoff scores that were useful in ruling in the presence of an anxiety disorder in general but did not identify cutoff scores to rule in the presence of principal GAD or principal SP. For mothers' reports only, receiver operating characteristics analyses identified a useful cutoff score to rule out the presence of an anxiety disorder, as well as a cutoff score to rule out the presence of principal GAD. Finally, discriminant function analyses determined the most useful subscales for ruling in and ruling out an anxiety disorder in general, as well as principal GAD and principal SP. Findings are discussed with regard to diagnosis of child anxiety and the clinical utility of the CBCL with anxious youth.

  PublisherDOI

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2004-06-01 · 12 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Carrie Spindel

  The Graduate Center, CUNY

  8 shared

• Rachel G. Klein

  Johns Hopkins Hospital

  8 shared

• Leslie A. Hulvershorn

  Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis

  6 shared

• Alice Dodds

  Drexel University

  4 shared

• Amy Krain Roy

  University of Connecticut

  4 shared

• Yair Bar‐Haim

  Tel Aviv University

  4 shared

• Erica Dixon

  4 shared

• Ellen Leibenluft

  University of Sheffield

  4 shared