Dr. Dan Griffin is a licensed psychologist with extensive post-doctoral training in adult and family-based therapies. He has over 30 years of experience helping people improve their lives. Dan is on the staff of The Center for Assessment and Therapy.

He is a senior teacher and trainer of clinicians. Dan has taught at Children’s National Medical Center, New York University Hospital, Hofstra University, George Washington University, Washington School of Psychiatry, and the Minuchin Center for the Family, NYC.

Dan brings warmth and understanding to his work with adults, children, families and couples struggling with behavioral and emotional issues. Personable, humorous and focused, Dr. Dan is committed to working in a way that focuses strengths and connection to solve problems.

Dan is committed to creating an effective therapeutic setting that respects each participant as a unique being, while fostering growth and desired change. He helps people grow and solve problems while emphasizing strengths rather than pathology. Dan believes interventions that engage the people we are close to are the best for resolving problems and achieving lasting change. Dr. Dan is committed to integrating the most current scientific and empirically-based research in his work.

In addition to a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, Dan earned a post-doctoral certificate in couples and family therapy from the Ackerman Institute for the Family (New York, NY), upon completion of an intensive three-year externship. Dan is a member of the American Family Therapy Academy and the Maryland State Psychological Association.

A few words about Dan

I have only the highest affirmations for Dr Danny Griffin, who has been a treasured teacher here at Children’s National Medical Center for over 7 years! Danny has breathed life into our Family Therapy Seminar that our Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellows are required to participate in over their two years of training here at CNMC. I have served as the training director here at CNMC, and thus work closely with my seminar leaders. Under Danny’s watchful eye, his co-taught seminar has truly blossomed. He is a brilliant, thoughtful, witty and creative teacher, who is able to bring the subject matter alive, and create an evocative experiential learning atmosphere which in turn promotes a self-directed learning style. Many a fellow have shared case vignettes with me where a complex family with whom they are struggling is expertly interviewed in the seminar by Danny, allowing underlying unrecognized systemic issues to come to the surface so that the family and in turn the fellows begin to gain a better grasp of maladaptive forces impacting their daily lives. Such a case-based teaching style has made Danny amongst our favorite teachers.

Danny also has the intellectual capacity to ground such case-based teaching in literature and theory in a way that comes alive and makes sense to the learners. Most importantly, every fellow emerges from this experiential seminar with a profound respect for the importance of the family in their work with the child, as a child never exists outside of the family in which they are embedded. Danny helps our fellows step back and appreciate this bigger picture, so that a holistic treatment frame emerges which incorporates the family and the child or children within.

Peter Daniolos, MD
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Training Director 2003-10
Children’s National Medical Center
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, The GWU School of Medicine