Experience

Dr. Rachael Lyon is passionate about supporting children, adolescents, and families as they navigate fears, challenges, and difficult experiences. She is a skilled clinician who strives to create a space built on safety, collaboration, trust, and hope—where young people and families feel accepted, supported, and empowered to grow.

As a Health Psychologist, Dr. Lyon provides support related to coping with medical diagnoses and treatment, hospitalizations and procedures, pain and procedural anxiety, medical trauma, treatment adherence, and overall adjustment to illness across the developmental spectrum. She also offers consultation to medical teams, allied health professionals, and educational staff, working collaboratively to ensure children and families feel understood, supported, and well cared for.

Dr. Lyon has extensive experience providing psychological and neuropsychological assessment and intervention to help children, adolescents, and families navigate a wide range of concerns, including anxiety, low mood, obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), trauma-related difficulties, emotion regulation challenges, neurodevelopmental differences (e.g., autism and ADHD), learning and attention concerns, and neurological conditions and acquired brain injury (e.g., epilepsy, stroke, and neuroinflammatory conditions).

Clinical Approach

Dr. Lyon’s therapeutic approach is evidence-based, strengths-oriented, and tailored to each child and family’s unique needs and goals. She sees therapy as an opportunity to ease distress, build resilience, and help families access as much calm, joy, and freedom as possible in daily life. She draws from a variety of evidence-based treatments, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Motivational Interviewing (MI), as well as behavioural and attachment-focused approaches.

Dr. Lyon’s expertise in health and neuropsychology gives her a distinctive lens for supporting children and families navigating medical challenges. She approaches assessment and therapy with a deep understanding of how physical health, emotional well-being, and cognitive functioning are interconnected, offering care that is attuned, supportive, and tailored to each child’s and family’s unique needs.

Background & Training

Dr. Lyon earned her Ph.D. in Clinical–Developmental Psychology (Clinical Neuropsychology track) at York University. She completed her pre-doctoral residency at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in Health Psychology and Research/Clinical Neuropsychology. She is now a staff psychologist at SickKids, supporting children, adolescents, and families facing medical challenges. Dr. Lyon’s clinical training spans a wide range of medical and primary mental health clinics, including Haematology and Oncology, Bone Marrow Transplant, Neurology, Neonatal Neurology, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Cardiology, and Psychiatry. She has also completed training in a variety of community agencies, hospitals, and private practice settings throughout the Greater Toronto Area.