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Biography

Dr. Nguyen Williams earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and doctoral degree at Loma Linda University (LLU) with highest honors. She completed her rigorous clinical training at Harbor-UCLA Child & Adolescent Outpatient Psychiatry, Internship at UCSD Department of Psychiatry and Rady Children's Hospital - San Diego (as Chief Intern), and Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Child and Adolescent Services Research Center. She joined the faculty at UCSD Department of Psychiatry as Assistant Clinical Professor in 2010. Currently, she serves as the Founding Director of the Anxiety & OCD Clinic (AOC), a specialty clinic at Rady Children's Hospital, Outpatient Psychiatry. She is also the Director of Clinical Training for Child and Adolescent Psychology at Rady Children's Hospital, Outpatient Psychiatry. She continues to coordinate the psychological assessment program for children and adolescents at Rady Children's Hospital, Outpatient Psychiatry, including the Autism Spectrum Disorder assessment program that she developed in 2009, which serves primarily low-income, culturally diverse families. In addition to clinical supervision of UCSD child psychiatry fellows, UCSD/VA psychology interns, SDSU/UCSD JDP practicum students, Dr. Nguyen Williams has taught in the Practice of Medicine course at UCSD School of Medicine for the past 5 years. Starting in 2015, she is the Chair of Child & Adolescent Psychology of San Diego Psychological Association.

Research Interests

Evidence-based assessment and interventions for children and adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders, autism spectrum disorders, and mood disorders. Incredible Years parent-mediated intervention for children with ADHD and other disruptive behavior disorders.

Clinical and Teaching Focus

Dr. Nguyen Williams's clinical teaching and supervision is in the area of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, as well as clinical psychological assessment. She specializes in working with children and adolescents who have histories of severe psychopathology and from multicultural backgrounds, and serves as the only bilingual/bicultural Vietnamese-American clinician in the Department. Dr. Nguyen Williams also conducts and supervises psychological assessments of children and adolescents. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Association for Psychological Science, and San Diego Psychological Association. She recently published the comprehensive treatment manual, Modular CBT for Depressed Mood: Individualizing Treatment for Children and Adolescents, which is used locally and nationally by clinicians.