Health Psychologist, California Pacific Medical Center
Dr. Sarah Dihmes has her Ph.D. in clinical health psychology. She currently offers several types of biofeedback to patients, families, parents, and caregivers from diverse cultural backgrounds. Dr. Dihmes helps clients become aware of the stress responses in their body and mind, and teaches them skills to combat the negative effects of stress through self-regulation. Dr. Dihmes specializes in the prevention and management of psychophysiological manifestations of stress, pain, and illness. Her interventions include cardiorespiratory, electromyography (EMG), thermal, electroencephalography (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and heart rate variability biofeedback.
She has been biofeedback certified for 7 years, and was the Secretary, and youngest board member, of the Mid-Atlantic Society of Biofeedback and Behavioral Medicine. She ran the biofeedback program at the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco, combating negative effects of trauma through a variety of evidence-supported protocols. Dr. Dihmes was the Assistant Research Coordinator for the Johns Hopkins Bayview Breast Cancer Center. Dr. Dihmes has worked in academic hospitals, community clinics, and non- profit organizations from coast to coast in the U.S.
Dr. Dihmes completed her post-doctoral fellowship in the Health Psychology program at California Pacifica Medical Center (CPMC) in the Neurogastroenterology Department, as well as the Bryan Hemming Cancer Center, Radiation Oncology, and Cardiac Rehabilitation. She received her Ph.D. from Alliant University in San Diego, and came to San Francisco after completing her research on Male Caregiving at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and pre-doctoral training at the University of Maryland Medical School and Veterans Administration, Sharp Memorial Rehabilitation Center in San Diego, Robert Wood Johnson, and UCSD.
She has over 20 publications in the field of behavioral medicine and hopes to continue in a career helping patients with medical illness and their families gain tools to buffer the effects stress and cope with negative life circumstances.
As a teacher, supervisor, researcher and clinician in health psychology, she brings expertise of being a member of a multidisciplinary team and delivers treatment to patients suffering from a diverse range of disorders including the following: depression, anxiety, trauma, sleep disorders, disorders of self-regulation, stress-induced illness, headaches, gastroenterological disorders, rheumatic diseases, cancer, and chronic pain.
She has taught classes to college and graduate students, hospital staffs, and chronic pain patients at several universities and hospitals on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Dr. Dihmes research in psychoneuroimmunology has been published in several scientific journals. She believes that the client is the expert on their life and offers her knowledge to help individuals and their families gain tools to buffer the effects stress and cope with negative life circumstances.
