Dr. Katherine Gardhouse, Ph.D., C.Psych
Director & Founder, Clinical & Health Psychologist, Assistant Professor McMaster University
Meet Dr. Katherine Gardhouse
Katherine is a licensed clinical, counseling, and health psychologist. In addition to her role at eFIT, she holds a position as a staff psychologist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton in the Eating Disorder Program and is an Assistant Professor at McMaster University in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences. She completed her Ph.D. in the Psychological Clinical Science Department at the University of Toronto and her pre and postdoctoral residency at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in the Inpatient Trauma Unit and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Clinic. During her fellowship, she conducted research and clinical intervention on a randomized controlled trial looking at outcomes of trauma-adaptions of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) for individuals with BPD who have experienced trauma and chronic invalidation throughout their lives.
Katherine has worked in a variety of settings, including inpatient and outpatient hospital programs, community mental health, private practices, and clinical research trials. Katherine provides evidence-based treatment for adults experiencing problems related to eating, body image, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), trauma, substances, emotion regulation, and relationship difficulties. Her therapeutic approach is integrative, drawing primarily from Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), somatic, mindfulness, and compassion-focused techniques.
Katherine believes in a comprehensive approach that considers the full person, fostering healing through empathy, connection, and understanding. Incorporating a biopsychosocial approach ensures above all else that care is patient-centered, addressing the unique needs and experiences of each person. Katherine works collaboratively with clients in a secure, non-judgmental, and culturally sensitive environment to help them access and build on their strengths and achieve their goals.
Katherine believes that the therapeutic relationship can support clients to rediscover themselves, gain deeper self-understanding, improve health, promote personal growth, and that through the therapeutic process, pain can transform into resiliency. Katherine also works from the perspective that well-being exists at the intersection of physical and psychological health, and thus aims to empower clients to prioritize their emotional and physical needs simultaneously.
Katherine is passionate about providing a space where members and staff can come together to develop a life-long relationship with themselves that increases one’s capacity to endure in the face of hardship, to overcome the pains of the past, and support one another to create a life we feel good about.
Founding efit
Dr. Katherine Gardhouse founded eFIT Institute and the Centre for Functional Integrative Therapy (CFIT) in 2022 as part of a larger mission to make high quality mental health care more accessible, and to support the development of an institute dedicated to the advancement of high-quality evidence-based psychological interventions that incorporate biopsychosocial aspects of care within one system. Katherine views mental health as a complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. Throughout her research and clinical practice, Katherine aims to develop intervention approaches that recognize this complexity and offer a comprehensive framework for understanding and addressing mental health and well-being.
Katherine’s vision for eFIT began over a decade ago, when she felt a deep sense of dissatisfaction with current approaches to mental health care that were within the medical model and singular in their focus. While Katherine has a deep appreciation for the medical model in advancing our understanding and treatment of mental health conditions, she also recognized the many ways in which it falls short in addressing the complexity and reality of human experiences. Instead, Katherine had a vision of moving mental health care out of the confines of hospital settings and medical offices, and back into the community where an emphasis can be placed on the social, emotional, physical, and environmental factors that significantly impact mental well-being. In creating eFIT Institute and the Centre for Functional Integrative Therapy, Katherine aims to deploy an advanced biopsychosocial model of mental health care that considers the full spectrum of influences on an individual’s well-being, directly in the community of Hamilton and beyond.