Dr. Pratima Pathania, a 2021 graduate of the Wright Institute’s Clinical Psychology program, was born in India and moved to Hollister, California when she was twelve years old. Her father was a fashion designer in India and transferred to the US for work. Several years later, he was able to bring Dr. Pathania, her brother, and her mother here as well. “My mom was technically a single mom for four or five years, which was tough,” she recalled. “We had family there, but it's not like having two parents in the home - she was responsible for taking care of so many things.” Moving to the US as a preteen was very challenging for Dr. Pathania. Although she already spoke English, adjusting to American English and the education system here took some effort. “My parents were immigrants and they could not really help me or guide me in the educational world because they didn't know this system,” she reflected. “I started realizing how behind I was when it was time to apply to college and I saw that other students were already taking college classes or doing volunteer work to get to know the field that they wanted to pursue.”

After graduating from high school, Dr. Pathania began her college career at Sierra College, a community college in Rocklin, California. She later enrolled at the University of California at Davis, where she planned to major in biology in preparation for a career in medicine. “My dad really wanted me to go into the medical field and I remember that was kind of ingrained into me,” she explained. “I went in with that plan and it wasn't until my junior year that I decided to change my major from biology to psychology.” After volunteering at a children’s hospital, Dr. Pathania realized that being a medical doctor didn’t really appeal to her. Around the same time, she was taking a clinical psychology course that really resonated with her. “It's such a core memory because I remember when the teacher was going over ADHD, I realized that it was exactly one my family members had been dealing with,” she recalled. “I think that also made me realize there was so much out there that I didn't know about the psychology world that I wanted to switch my major.” Dr. Pathania graduated from UC Davis with her BS in psychology with an emphasis on biology in 2012.

From 2012-2014, Dr. Pathania worked as an Instructional Aide for Behavioral Education for Children with Autism and then at Learning Solutions Kids, Inc. In both of these roles, she performed behavioral analysis for children with autism. “Behavioral Education for Children with Autism was my first job ever,” she shared. “I learned so much working there and visiting children in their homes as part of their treatment plans.” One of the things Dr. Pathania learned from these positions was that she did not want to work with children in the future, primarily because of the added challenge of collaborating with their parents. “With children with autism, you have to be very structured or everything falls apart,” she explained. “Some of the parents would ignore the treatment plan, then complain that the program wasn’t working for their child, which was really frustrating.”

Dr. Pathania had planned to stay in California for her graduate studies, but during a trip to Oregon, family friends suggested that she should look at universities in their area. She searched and found Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, which had a clinical master’s program that didn’t require her to have a lot of research experience. “There were twenty of us in a two-year program together and I was the only person of color,” she reflected. “It was a very unique experience, but I learned a lot about being proud of my identities and what I bring to the table.” In 2016, Dr. Pathania earned her MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Southern Oregon University.

While she was pursuing her master’s degree, Dr. Pathania worked part-time as a Qualified Mental Health Associate at Options for Southern Oregon - Hazel Center in Medford, Oregon in order to support herself. The Hazel Center was a locked facility for men and women who had committed crimes as a result of their mental health challenges. “It was a very interesting experience because I wasn’t just seeing them in a clinical way, I was helping them to live their lives,” she explained. “We would take them out shopping, to the movie theater, on hikes, or whatever they decided they wanted to do for their outing each week.” As a skills trainer there, Dr. Pathania helped the residents learn the skills they would need to transition back to their lives after their time in the facility.

After graduating from Southern Oregon University, Dr. Pathania decided to pursue her doctorate. “I realized that a master’s degree was not enough for the work I wanted to do,” she shared. “I decided that I wanted to get a PsyD instead of a PhD because my clinical background was stronger than my research background.” Dr. Pathania wanted to move back to California, so she applied to three PsyD programs in the Bay Area. Heading into the interviews, Dr. Pathania felt strongly about attending another program, but her interview with Dr. Beate Lohser changed her mind. “At the interview for the other program, I had asked some questions and they told me I could look them up in their manual,” she recalled. “I asked the same questions in my interview with Dr. Lohser and, because she didn’t know the answers, she personally walked me down to the dean’s office to get my questions answered.” That small act completely changed Dr. Pathania’s perspective and she was excited when she was accepted to the Wright Institute’s Clinical Psychology program in the fall of 2016.

Looking back on her time at the Wright Institute, Dr. Pathania has many happy memories of time spent with friends. Along with three other Indian students, she created the Wright Institute South Asian Association (WISAA) student group. “My happiest memory was when the group set up a Diwali event - the Wright had never looked like that before and it was so beautiful,” she reminisced. “We had so much food, we had music going on, we played games. It was amazing!” She also formed close bonds with several members of the Wright Institute faculty. Dr. Alicia del Prado taught Dr. Pathania’s first and second year case conference courses and really helped to guide her as she started her doctoral studies. She also worked as a teaching assistant for Dr. Kayoko Yokoyama who was an amazing mentor.

The biggest challenge that Dr. Pathania faced during her studies was during her second year when she didn’t pass her comprehensive exam orals. “When Dr. Veronique Thompson and Dr. Anatasia Kim told me that they couldn’t pass me, I went into the bathroom and cried for at least thirty minutes,” she admitted. “When I told my parents, I expected them to question why I didn’t pass, but they just assured me that I worked really hard and it would be okay.” Dr. Pathania was extremely grateful for their support and for the support of Dr. Leon Wann and Dr. Becky Pizer, who helped her process her disappointment and keep going.

Dr. Pathania’s first and second year practicum placements were at the Berkeley Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Clinic and Portia Bell Hume Behavioral Health and Training Center. She shared that she learned a lot of her early assessment skills at the CBT clinic, which she still uses today. At Portia Bell Hume, Dr. Pathania learned group therapy under the guidance of Dr. Meji Singh. “I learned a lot from him about how to observe and not react - that's what we practiced in our group therapy,” she recalled. “He taught us to read the room and really enhanced my skills in picking up environmental cues.” Dr. Pathania enjoyed her experiences at both of these practicum placements, which she credits for building up her CBT and psychodynamic skillsets.

For her third year practicum, Dr. Pathania worked at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA in their Adult Services division. She was excited to learn more about how medicine and psychology work together in this environment and she really enjoyed the highly structured atmosphere. “I found that I was finishing on time and, when I was done, I didn’t have any work to do at home,” she shared. “I really like that part of Kaiser or any medical system where there's no access outside of your workplace.” Dr. Pathania also enjoyed that the focus was on working with adults in this role.

Dr. Pathania completed her pre-doctoral internship at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA as well, where she was part of the adult and child crisis response team, performed hospital consultations, and administered adult ADHD testing and other assessments. “I really loved working on the crisis team and not having a caseload,” she reflected. “Our job was just to evaluate patients and get them connected and I enjoyed that.” Dr. Pathania was also excited for the opportunity to gain specialized training in ADHD assessment during her internship. “I remember my supervisor there brought up the idea that ADHD often gets missed in immigrant children because the teachers think they are struggling because of language difficulties,” she recalled. “We had a lot of cultural conversations, which I really enjoyed, and I was able to do ADHD assessment with a cultural lens that I might not have gotten anywhere else.”

After graduating from the Wright Institute in 2021, Dr. Pathania felt very prepared to begin her career. “I think that the multicultural training we received sets Wright Institute students apart from all of our competition in the Bay Area,” she explained. “I used to notice in my practicum other people were not having the kind of conversations and dialogues that we were having as Wright Institute students in terms of multiculturalism.” Dr. Pathania also felt very well-rounded as a result of her practicum experiences as she was applying for post-doctoral positions. She would encourage current and prospective students to follow this advice that she received as a new student at the Wright Institute: get the most variety of training that you can. “When I was picking my practicums, I was very strategic about getting diverse experiences,” she recalled. “I never saw any practicum as a waste of time because I knew I wanted the experience.”

Dr. Pathania completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Kaiser Permanente’s South Sacramento Postdoctoral Training Program in Sacramento, CA. Although it was a generalist position, she was able to do two rotations while she was there, one in bariatrics and one in assessment. Dr. Pathania loved working in bariatrics, in particular. “I was doing psychiatric evaluations of patients who wanted to get bariatric surgery done,” she shared. “I was one of the people in their bariatrics journey to decide whether they were going to be cleared for bariatric surgery and I loved that work.” Dr. Pathania was grateful for the opportunity to gain specialized training in these two areas and enjoyed those rotations more than the generalist aspect of the role.

From 2020-2022, Dr. Pathania served as the Executive Committee Membership Chair for the Asian American Psychological Association’s Division on South Asian Americans (DoSAA). What she enjoyed most about the role was being able to connect with other South Asians in the field. “At that time, there were a lot of things going on back in India like farmers’ protest and a lot of political things shifting,” she explained. “We were creating spaces for mental health providers to come and talk about how it was impacting their mental health and how it was impacting their work when their students or their patients were coming into sessions and worrying about their family back home.” One of the events they planned was called Chai Chats, where members would bring tea or whatever they wanted to drink and join in conversation in a safe space to discuss their challenges.

When Dr. Pathania was looking for a position after completing her post-doc, someone suggested that she should reach out to Kaiser Permanente’s Connect to Care Telepsychiatry Regional Center in Rancho Cordova, CA. She was still working towards her license at the time and many institutions were only accepting licensed providers. “I called their recruiter, sent in my CV, and explained to them that I had lots of good experience doing assessment,” she recalled. “They ended up creating a psychological associate position for me that they didn’t previously offer.” Dr. Pathania served as their Intake Assessment Coordinator until January 2026, working from home and doing intakes for all of Northern California. This January, Dr. Pathania took on a new role within the organization doing short-term therapy and ADHD assessments and she’s excited to see what this new position will bring.

When she’s not working, Dr. Pathania enjoys spending time with her family and her dog, Sheru, a two-year-old Great Pyrenees. “His name, Sheru, means little lion - he’s a big dog,” she shared. “We spend a lot of time together because I work from home.” Dr. Pathania loves to take Sheru on walks and hiking in nature. Because she is indoors so much while working from home, she likes to spend her free time outside doing physical activities. Last November, Dr. Pathania got engaged and she’s looking forward to planning her upcoming wedding.

For the next couple of years, Dr. Pathania plans to focus on her personal life before taking the next steps forward in her professional life. Further down the road, Dr. Pathania hopes to start her own private practice with a focus on immigrants and the South Asian population. “I feel like our community really needs mental health support,” she explained. “That's why my goal is to move towards creating a space for that.”