Pete Dillon, PhD

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Dr. Dillon serves as a staff psychologist and Director of Family Therapy at the Lindner Center of HOPE. He has a generalist practice, treating families as well as individual adults, children, and adolescents in the Outpatient department.

He has been associated with the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine since completing a postdoctoral fellowship in 1999. He holds the rank of Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience.

He earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Virginia, with extensive training in Cognitive Behavior Therapy as well as Family Systems therapy, taking a Competence Approach to understanding patients and families, with balanced attention to both pathology and strengths. His dissertation research focused on the long-term benefits for families using divorce mediation versus traditional adversarial court to resolve issues related to custody, support and visitation. This line of research led to working closely with divorce attorneys in the Cincinnati region in collaborative divorce, a multidisciplinary process for assisting families to made decisions about their future outside of court, in the most dignified and respectful manner based on their highest-level goals and values. Dr. Dillon became the first non-attorney to serve as Co-chair for the Cincinnati Academy of Collaborative Professionals.

Prior to joining the Lindner Center of HOPE in 2023, he practiced as a generalist in the UCHealth Psychiatry department outpatient practice. Dr Dillon was awarded the Excellence in Mental Health Award as Exemplary Therapist of the year 2018 by the Southwest Ohio chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). He is past president of the Cincinnati Society of Child Clinical Psychologists and has served on the board for the Cincinnati Academy of Professional Psychologists.

His teaching has focused on psychotherapy, providing lectures to medical students and residents on this topic, and supervising psychology graduate students and psychiatry residents in their training in individual, couples and family therapy. He developed and directed the UC Family Guidance Clinic, which provided a unique and innovative training model while providing excellent mental health services for the Medicaid population. This clinic provided live supervision with bug-in-ear input for the training therapists from a supportive team of fellow trainees, observing one another’s casework and therapy styles. The richness of the training and the quality of care was significantly enhanced by this team approach.

Dr. Dillon has also dedicated himself to burn-out prevention in the field of mental health. He developed the Program for Enhanced Engagement and Peer Support (PEEPS) at UC's Psychiatry department, an innovative burn-out prevention model using weekly small-group wellness accountability sessions in which providers share stresses that "drain batteries" as well of successes that "charged batteries," in order to catch early signs of burnout and support connection and work vitality.

Presentation Topics:

• Psychotherapy
• Family Systems and Parenting
• Depression and Anxiety

Degree(s):

• 1986--1990 B.A. Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame. IN
• 1992-1998 Ph.D. Clinical psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
• 1999-2000 Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Cincinnati, Department of Psychiatry

Internship and Residencies:

• 1998-1999 Generalist Internship in Clinical Psychology. Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Chicago, IL

Licensure and Certification:

• 2000 Ohio License in Clinical Psychology
• 2022 PSYPact Member

This provider offers telehealth visits.