Dr. Emily Dossett has spent many years preparing for a career in Women's Mental Health.  After completing undergraduate work at Stanford University, she spent a year in Washington, DC, at George Washington University's Center for Health Policy Research, investigating the effects of policy change on women's and children's access to health care.   Her next move was to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she completed at Masters of Theological Studies degree at Harvard Divinity School.  This degree focused on the intersections between health care, culture, philosophy, and women's studies.  She then enrolled at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.  While at UCLA, Dr. Dossett was privileged to study both the core curriculum as well as electives such as Genetics, Emergency Psychiatry, and Neuroradiology.  She also traveled widely on medically-related journeys, such as providing health care in impoverished areas of Honduras and Nicaragua, serving on a Pediatrics HIV ward in Capetown, South Africa, and studying integrative medicine in northern India.  Throughout these experiences, Dr. Dossett continued to develop her passion for treating mental illness and, specifically, working with women affected by it.  She graduated from medical school with highest honors and induction into the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society.  She was also recognized for her research in evaluating faith-based communities' appropriateness for providing mental health services.

Dr. Dossett pursued her psychiatric training through an intern year at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and a general adult psychiatric residency at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (now the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior).  She completed training in specialty clinics such as the Women's Life Center, the West Los Angeles VA Women's Comprehensive Health Center, and the Mood Disorders Clinic.  She underwent extensive training in various psychotherapies, including Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Interpersonal Psychotherapy, and psychodynamic psychotherapy, as well as couples, family, and group work.  In addition, she had the privilege of serving as Chief Resident during her senior year of residency. 

At this time, Dr. Dossett is in private practice in Women's Mental Health in Pasadena, California, where she does both medication management and psychotherapy.  She also is. the founder and director of the Maternal Wellness Clinic at LAC+USC, a clinic dedicated to maternal depression care for women served through the county mental health system.  Dr. Dossett writes and speaks extensively on topics related to maternal depression, and she has given lectures, grand rounds, and training seminars for organizations as diverse as the Los Angeles Best Babies Network, the Welcome, Baby! home visitation program, and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, to name a few.  Her speaking engagements train other health care providers to screen, treat, and/or refer women with psychiatric illness during pregnancy and the postpartum.  Finally, she serves on the Los Angeles County Mental Health Task Force, a consortium of over thirty public and private organizations dedicated to improving public policy in perinatal mental health care issues.