Akhila Khanna, LCAT

Akhila Khanna (she/her) is a creative arts/drama therapist from New Delhi, India currently practicing in New York City. She provides bilingual care in English and Hindi to individuals across abilities, cultures, and lifespans, using a trauma-informed, holistic, and culturally-responsive approach. Akhila has experience working with adults, adolescents, children, and families.

Through Dwellness, in addition to providing in-home therapy services, Akhila provides school counseling for pre-k-8th grade students, as well as staff workshops and support at St. Stephen of Hungary School.

Akhila also has experience providing therapeutic care through inpatient psychiatry, partial hospitalization, outpatient chemical dependency, and with asylum seekers and their families. She has supported clients struggling with symptoms of complex trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, psychosis, and borderline personality disorder.

Influenced largely by a strengths-based and liberation psychology framework, Akhila believes that health is not only the absence of disease, but rather it is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. In her practice, Akhila centers the role of socio-cultural relations and systems both in the creation and alleviation of our mental health by being a partner in crisis and joy.  A classical Indian dancer and singer, Akhila integrates a range of creative modalities in her treatment with psychodynamic talk therapy. This can look like using the beats of a drum to regulate a moment of anxiety or slowly verbalizing unmanageable life stressors. As a researcher, Akhila writes extensively about the impact of performing art practices in communities in her blog and in academic journals. In her spare time Akhila likes to run, watch as many plays as she possibly can, and crack a bit too many puns.

Schedule a consultation with our Clinical Intake Coordinator here.