Dana Ben-Israel
Clinical psychologist 
BA Psych (Hons), MPsych (Clinical)

Dana is committed to helping her clients navigate the complicated journey of building a family and raising children. Her work involves supporting women and men through the different stages of their journey to and through parenthood – encompassing planning, conception, pregnancy, postpartum, and beyond. This includes providing compassionate support to parents who have experienced trauma and loss due to miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal death.

Working from an attachment-oriented approach, Dana is not only interested in the relationship between her client and their infant, but also their own story of being parented or cared for.  She recognises the profound impact that early parent/carer-child relationship memories can have on the experience of parenthood.  The transition can feel distressing, and can lead to potential challenges bonding with baby.  In therapy, Dana integrates both emotion-focused techniques with therapeutic parent–infant interventions to empower clients to break free from repeating their early relationship patterns and create secure emotional bonds with their infants.

Dana encourages clients to tune into their own wisdom and reflective abilities, fostering a connection with both themselves and their infant and partners. Her ultimate goal is to build confidence in the ability to manage the often competing demands in the perinatal period, while fostering growth as parents and partners.

Dana was awarded a Masters of Clinical Psychology from the University of Melbourne and is committed to ongoing professional development in the field of perinatal and attachment psychology, completing the Infant and Perinatal Mental Health Intensive Training with the Perinatal Training Centre.  Dana is a registered Facilitator of Circle of Security Parenting Program and regularly attends meetings and symposiums relating to perinatal and infant mental health. She has extensive experience working with mothers and families and has a special interest in working with eating disorders, body image dissatisfaction and weight concerns in the perinatal and postpartum period.

Babies are welcome to appointments and there are baby change facilities onsite.

Areas of Special Interest

• Preconception, including fertility issues
• Pregnancy
• Perinatal loss
• Antenatal depression and anxiety
• Eating disorders and body dissatisfaction in the perinatal and postpartum period
• Birth trauma
• Premature Birth
• Postnatal depression and anxiety
• Parent-infant attachment
• Adjustment issues
• Infants
• Toddlers
• Parenting
• Fathers

 Professional Memberships

• The Gold Coast Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Network
• Infant and Child Mental Health Community of Practice Network
• Northern Rivers Eating Disorder Practitioner Network
• International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST)
• Registered Facilitator of Circle of Security Parenting Program

 Fees & Rebates