Diana Lynn Barnes is a psychotherapist who has been specializing in women’s reproductive mental health for 30 years. Frequently interviewed by the media, Dr. Barnes is also widely published on all facets of women’s mental health around the child-bearing years. She wrote the guidelines for the assessment and treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders for the Perinatal Advisory Council of Los Angeles and she is the editor and contributing author of the definitive reference text on Women’s Reproductive Mental Health across the Lifespan, published by Springer in 2014. More recently, she wrote two chapters for the text “Infanticide and Filicide: Foundations in Maternal Mental Health Forensics. She also authored the paper on Pregnancy Denial as a Dissociative Disorder published in the Archives of Women’s Mental Health.

 

She is a past president of Postpartum Support International and currently sits on their Advisory council. Dr. Barnes is a trainer for 20/20 Mom’s webinar series in collaboration with PSI. 

 

In addition to private practice, Dr. Barnes is an expert on maternal mental health and the criminal justice system and is frequently retained by legal counsel on cases of postpartum psychosis and infanticide, pregnancy denial and neonaticide as well as child abuse and neglect where a child/children may have been harmed. She is the current Chair of the International

Marce Society Special Interest Group on Forensics and Maternal Mental Health.

 

She is a lecturer at the Women’s Life Center at UCLA. Diana Barnes is a clinical member of the California Association and the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists as well as the International Marce Society, Marce of North America and is a board member of the North American Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics and Gynecology. In 2009, Dr. Barnes received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Eli Lilly Foundation for her extraordinary contributions to the field of maternal mental health and child bearing-related mood disorders. She maintains a private practice in Sherman Oaks, California.