Amy Banks, M.D.

Director of Advanced Training at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute

After graduating magna cum laude from Tufts University she earned her medical degree at Georgetown University and her psychiatric training at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, a Harvard residency program. Amy was the psychiatrist-in-charge of The Women’s Treatment Program, a residential and day treatment program at McLean Hospital based on relational-cultural theory; she was the team psychiatrist for the Victims of Violence Program at Cambridge Hospital, and Medical Director for Mental Health at the Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, MA. Over the last ten years at the JBMTI, Amy has been integrating emerging neuroscience information with relational-cultural theory. She has spoken throughout the country on “The Neurobiology of Relationship” and has an ongoing passion to spread the message that we are “hard-wired for connection”.

Amy co-edited The Complete Guide to Mental Health for Women published by Beacon Press in 2004. She has written numerous articles on the treatment of childhood trauma including a popular manual "PTSD, Relationships and Brain Chemistry," published as a project report in the Works in Progress series. She has been a co-investigator of the "National Lesbian Family Study," a 20+ year longitudinal study (led by principle investigator Nanette Gartrell MD), and has co-authored numerous journal articles describing the findings. Most recently, Amy has been exploring the field of energy psychology, integrating unified field theory into an understanding of how and why connections heal. Amy has a private practice in Lexington, MA specializing in “relational psychopharmacology” and the therapy and pharmacology of traumatized individuals.

Books Amy would recommend:

• The Neuroscience of Human Relationships by Louis Cozolino
• The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
• Women’s Growth in Connection by Judy Jordan et al.
• The Healing Connection by Irene Stiver and Jean Baker Miller
• How Connections Heal by Wendy Rosen and Maureen Walker