Kareen Marie Matouk, PhD

Kareen Matouk, PhD (she/her) is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and Assistant Director at the Gender Identity and Sexuality Program (GISP) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Matouk specializes in providing care to children, adolescents, emerging adults, and families. She has had extensive training in LGBTQ+ mental health and follows a gender-affirmative model of care in working with individuals across the gender and sexuality spectrum. Dr. Matouk strives to build mutual trust and provide a space that is open, compassionate, and empowering so that one can feel free to explore, understand, and accept their authentic self and courageously challenge and change that which no longer serves them. While she provides support and guidance during this process, she also aims to assist each individual in approaching challenges with confidence, agency, and independence.

Dr. Matouk believes that integrating various treatment approaches and shaping her clinical practice to fit with the needs of each individual is fundamental. She has extensive clinical training in Psychodynamic, Dialectical Behavioral (DBT), and Cognitive Behavioral (CBT) treatment modalities. Dr. Matouk values the importance of exploring how past relationships and experiences, as well as family dynamics and cultural factors, influence and shape one’s understanding of themselves and others. In this way, psychotherapy can help one evolve and deepen their sense of identity and establish an integrated and genuine sense of self as they move forward.

Dr. Matouk completed a master’s degree in clinical psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, with a concentration in child and family mental health. She later went on to receive her doctoral degree in clinical psychology at Long Island University – Brooklyn, where her research interests focused on sexual identity development, cultural factors, and attachment styles, as well as gender identity and body shame. Dr. Matouk graduated from a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia’s Gender Identity Program, where she provided evaluations of gender dysphoria, as well as individual and group psychotherapy. She completed her predoctoral internship at Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, where she received focused training in transgender healthcare, DBT, and trauma-informed clinical practice. Dr. Matouk has also trained at the NYU Child Study Center’s Gender and Sexuality Service and the Gender and Family Project at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. These roles have afforded her the opportunity to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams of providers and to advocate for the needs of transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive children, adolescents, and families across a various range of settings. In addition, Dr. Matouk has had experience providing adolescents and emerging adults with executive functioning coaching at the Child Mind Institute. She has also gained experience working with severe mental illness and inpatient psychiatric care at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, as well as conducting neuropsychological evaluations with children, adolescents, and young adults in various clinical settings.