Natalie Pon, MD
Child & Adolescent Psychiatrist
Dr. Pon is committed to working with children and their families using a developmentally informed approach to psychiatric assessment and care. She strongly believes in creating a treatment plan which addresses the child as a whole person and using a narrative approach to understanding a family’s story which surrounds and impacts a child’s mental health. Dr. Pon provides psychotherapy, family/parent work, social/behavioral interventions, and psychoeducation; she utilizes medication management where necessary to complement therapeutic approaches.
Dr. Pon has special expertise in the assessment and care of young children (0-6yo). She treats the range of early childhood and preschool mental health issues, including but not limited to: anxiety (separation, social, phobias, selective mutism, OCD), depression/irritability, disruptive behavior, adjustment and attachment issues, early childhood stress and trauma (including medical trauma and chronic medical conditions), parent-child/infant relational work, and sleep/eating/toileting issues.
She is highly experienced with play therapy and various modalities/adaptations of play therapy, including child-centered, dyadic, trauma-focused and cognitive-behavioral play therapy. She is trained in parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT), an evidence-based parent-child intervention which promotes building a healthy attachment and decreasing disruptive behavior, and she can provide PCIT to families if indicated. Dr. Pon is certified as a facilitator for Circle of Security (COS), an attachment based parenting program. She additionally has training in trauma-focused CBT (TF-CBT) and Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), both evidence based interventions for trauma.
Dr. Pon sees the range of youth for medication management. Her clinical interests include anxiety disorders, trauma, ADHD and depression. During her time at CHC, Dr. Pon has provided medication management and co-led DBT skills group as part of the RISE-IOP comprehensive DBT program.
In addition to her clinical work at CHC, Dr. Pon is Adjunct Clinical Faculty at Stanford in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She supervises child psychiatry fellows in young child assessment, treatment and play therapy. She also leads the Introduction to Working with Young Children class and Play Therapy course for child psychiatry fellowship and has taught and demonstrated live young child assessments and play therapy.
Dr. Pon is part of the AACAP infant and preschool committee and currently on the subcommittee creating a formal infant mental health curriculum. Dr. Pon has advanced training in psychodynamic work with young children and completed the year-long infancy/early childhood course at the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (CAPPTP) at San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SF-CP).
Dr. Pon completed her child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at Stanford University, where she served as Chief Fellow. She completed her general psychiatry residency at Baylor College of Medicine, where she received the resident of the year award for Harris Health System and trained at The Menninger Clinic in their Adolescent Treatment Program.
Education
- Stanford University Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship 2016-2018
- Baylor College of Medicine General Psychiatry Residency 2013-2016
- UT Southwestern Medical School 2013
- BS Cum Laude, Cornell University 2009
Licenses
- Board Certified in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2018
- Board Certified in General Psychiatry, 2016
- Texas Medical Board
- Medical Board of California
Professional Affiliations
- Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (CAPPTP), SF-CP, 2019-2020
- Chief Fellow 2017-2018, Stanford Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
- Palo Alto Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (PAPPTP) Fellowship 2017-2018
- Harris Health Resident of the Year 2016, Baylor College of Medicine
- Clinician-Educator Track 2014-2016, Baylor College of Medicine
Recent Presentations
- Using Play Skillfully Across Settings of Care, Northern California Regional Organization for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (NC-ROCAP), 2019
- Unconscious Gender Bias in the workplace, AACAP, 2018
- Stanford Klingenstein Fellowship Program (PSYC 225) Klingenstein Fellowship, Stanford School of Medicine, ongoing case presenter 2017-2018
- Teaching of Psychotherapy Interventions in the Psychiatric Emergency Center During Residency Training, American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, 2015
Publications
- Special Considerations in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Supervision, Supervision in Psychiatric Practice: Practical Approaches Across Venues and Providers, APA, May 2019.
- Care of Pregnant Woman with Severe Mental Illness, Directions in Psychiatry 2018
- Voltage-gated Potassium Channel Antibody Autoimmune Encephalopathy Presenting With Isolated Psychosis in an Adolescent. PUBMED ID 29303952
- Content-Area Framework for Conducting Family Meetings for Acutely Ill Psychiatric Patients. PUBMED ID 27648507
- Special Considerations in Pediatric Psychiatric Populations. PUBMED ID 26493525
Podcasts
