Danika Wagner (she/her)

MA, Doctoral Candidate

Danika is a doctoral candidate in the Clinical Psychology Program at York University. She also received her Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology at York University in 2024. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Mathematics from Dalhousie University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from York University. She takes a person-centred, collaborative, and thoughtful approach to each session, fostering a supportive environment where clients can feel comfortable engaging with complex and challenging concerns.

Danika has worked with adults on various presentations by flexibly employing a combination of evidence-based interventions. These include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Motivational Interviewing (MI), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), both in individual and group settings. Danika is also able to provide inference-based CBT for OCD.

She has worked with a wide range of OCD concerns, including intrusive and obsessional doubts related to feelings of “just right,” contamination, harm to oneself and others, relationships, religion, morality, responsibility, perfectionism, and magical thinking, and compulsions related to cleaning/washing, checking, repeating, reassurance seeking, and mental rituals.

Danika has experience providing both psychological treatment and psychodiagnostic assessments to individuals with diverse identities and complex mental health needs at North York General Hospital, the Frederick W. Thompson Anxiety Disorders Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and the York University Psychology Clinic. She will also soon be working at the Women’s Health Concerns and Sleep Medicine Clinics at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, where she will provide assessment and treatment services for individuals experiencing difficulties with sleep, mood, and anxiety at transitional periods in their lives. Through her training, she has gained experience working with individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety-related disorders (e.g., skin picking and hair pulling), mood, anxiety, substance use, trauma, neurodevelopmental disorders (autism and ADHD), emotion dysregulation and borderline personality disorder, and various forms of life stress (e.g., burnout). At FTPS, Danika offers assessment and treatment services for adults with diverse needs.

Danika holds a firm belief that every individual deserves personalized care that takes into consideration their unique life experiences and backgrounds. She is deeply committed to cultivating a collaborative relationship with her clients, acknowledging that they are the true experts of their own stories and possess a wealth of individual strengths, talents, and skills. By adopting a person-centered, strengths-based approach, she aims to empower her clients, integrating evidence-based interventions designed to support their personal growth and well-being. Danika’s holistic perspective fosters an environment where individuals can truly thrive, continuously building on their capabilities and enhancing their life experiences.

Outside of clinical practice, Danika’s graduate research focuses on the experience of mental effort in clinical populations. She is particularly interested in understanding appraisals of individuals under cognitive demands, so she wants to determine whether emotional reactivity skills may reduce feelings of mental effort and identify ways to modify tasks to improve the experience of mental effort.

Beyond clinical practice and research, Danika enjoys reading fiction, hiking, gardening, powerlifting, skiing, and spending time with her dog.