Dr Chandra Ghosh Ippen

Dr Chandra Ghosh Ippen is an award-winning children’s book author and child psychologist with over 30 years of experience conducting clinical work, research, and training in the area of early childhood trauma and diversity-informed practice. She is a co-developer of Child-Parent Psychotherapy and Associate Director of the Child Trauma Research Program at the University of California, San Francisco. As a children’s book author, she combines core trauma concepts and relational therapy concepts with metaphors and cute characters to create therapeutic stories that promote family mental health and support healing from traumatic experiences. Her books address difficult topics including posttraumatic stress, difficult separations, and parental mental health and substance misuse challenges.

Her story, Once I Was Very Very Scared, has reached well over 100,000 families, has been translated into 7 languages and has been featured in numerous news stories including on National Public Radio. Her Trinka and Sam disaster series, which was developed in partnership with the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) has versions in 17 languages, has been freely distributed to over 400,000 families worldwide, and has been recommended and shared by numerous governmental agencies and large organizations including the governments of Puerto Rico and Mexico, the Nepalese Ministry of Education, the Peace Corps, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the US Department of Education, and the Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Agency.