Bonnie Settlage

Dr. Settlage joined the Saybrook community in the Fall of 14 and served as the interim Co-Chair of the Clinical Psychology Department in Spring of 15. She is currently a member of the Clinical Psychology faculty at Saybrook. She is a licensed clinical psychologist in California. She received her BA in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, and her MA and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York (graduated 2006). From September 2008 to July 2014, she was at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. There she served as an Associate Professor of Practice in Psychology and the Director of the Psychology Program at AUC. She also had a private practice in Cairo and served as a clinical supervisor at the African and Middle East Refugee Assistance NGO in Cairo. Before Egypt, she was a staff psychologist at Napa State Hospital where she worked with individuals living with psychotic disorder diagnoses with forensic commitments, such as "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity" and "Mentally Disordered Offender." She currently has a small private practice in rural California. Her current research interests surround the concerns, challenges, and potentials of the entheogenic and psychotherapeutic uses of psychedelics. She has completed her training to become an MDMA assisted therapist for trauma through the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). She is also a founding member of the Saybrook Animal Care Research and Education with Dignity (SACRED) Professional Learning Community. Her research interests in this area center around healthy transspecies relationships and bereavement.