Dr. McHolm received her B.A. (Honours) in Psychology from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario.

Her predoctoral clinical internship was completed at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario where she pursued clinical interests in individual, group, and family treatment modalities and the neuropsychological assessment of youth. After completion of her Ph.D., Dr. McHolm worked as a postdoctoral research fellow with Dr. Harriet MacMillan of the Offord Centre for Child Studies (formerly the Canadian Centre for Studies of Children at Risk) where she developed interests in the impact of childhood maltreatment on the later functioning of adult women.

Since 2001, Dr. McHolm has worked within the McMaster Children’s Hospital system in various capacities.  Between 2001 and 2009, she served as the Director of the Selective Mutism Service and consulting psychologist to the Emotional Problems Service (later named Child & Youth Mental Health Outpatient Service) at McMaster Children’s Hospital.   Since 2009, Dr. McHolm has worked with the Child Advocacy and Assessment Program specializing in child maltreatment assessment and treatment.  At McMaster Children’s Hospital, Dr. McHolm has been involved in various clinical research projects (i.e., the study of youth with selective mutism; clinical outcome research) and the training of predoctoral clinical psychology interns, psychiatry residents, psychology students, and staff in a range of clinical skills.

As a complement to her involvement at McMaster Children’s Hospital, Dr. McHolm has also been affiliated with the Centre for Psychological Services at the University of Guelph since 1998.  For many years, she served as a Clinical Associate offering direct clinical service to children, youth, and their families through this clinic and has trained M.A. and Ph.D. students from the University’s Child Clinical Psychology graduate program.

As a final area of clinical activity, Dr. McHolm is keenly interested in providing training to mental health (& related) professionals in areas of expertise including selective mutism, anxious youth, and cognitive-behaviour therapy.  To this end, she has extensive experience offering skills-training workshops and in-services to those from the fields of psychology, social work, speech-language pathology and communication disorders, child development, and education.

  
Dr. McHolm holds an assistant professorship (part-time) at McMaster University (Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences; Clinical Behavioural Sciences Program) and associate faculty status at the University of Guelph (Psychology Department).  Dr. McHolm is also an associate research member of the Offord Centre for Child Studies.

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