Dr. Brittany Lakin-Starr

Dr. Brittany Lakin-Starr is a Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the Chicago Center for Growth and Change. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with more than 15 years of experience treating adults, children, and families from diverse backgrounds. Her areas of interest include: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), behavioral concerns, school issues, relationship challenges, and adjustment difficulties. She also helps individuals navigate life transitions; for example, young adulthood, becoming a couple, or starting a family.

Dr. Lakin-Starr is certified in Psychodrama and Gottman Couples therapy. Additionally, she is trained in EMDR (EMDRIA trained), Prolonged Exposure therapy for PTSD, Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), and evidence-based parenting strategies. She is also a Gottman Seven Principles Educator and a Gottman Bringing Baby Home Program Educator.

Before co-founding the Chicago Center for Growth and Change, Dr. Lakin-Starr was a staff psychologist at Illinois Masonic Medical Center’s Behavioral Health Services for seven years, where she provided supervision and didactic instruction for the clinical psychology doctoral students. While there, she oversaw the Effective Parenting Program and Children’s Social Skills groups. She also founded the psychodrama program and for the last five years led psychodrama groups. Dr. Lakin-Starr has worked in a variety of settings and has helped adults and children in medical centers, inpatient psychiatric hospitals, children’s hospitals, community mental health centers, and college counseling centers.

Dr. Lakin-Starr has taught many undergraduate psychology classes as adjunct faculty at Loyola University and is a frequent guest lecturer at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She conducts the mental health lecture series for both the Physical Therapy and the Prosthetics and Orthotics programs. She has also been featured as a contributing psychologist in several articles and was a guest on Dr. Zachary Friedman’s podcast, The 50 Minute Hour, where they discussed psychodrama.