Jason Elias, Ph.D.

Widely respected nationally, Dr. Jason Elias brings both clinical depth and scientific rigor to his work, ensuring patients receive care grounded in cognitive science, clinical expertise, and human connection. He founded CBTeam in 2016 as an outpatient clinic that would be a natural outgrowth of his work in the Harvard/MGB system — patient-centered, inclusive of lived experience, and devoted to mentorship and being of service to others.

Before founding CBTeam, Jason served as Director of Psychological Services and Clinical Research at the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Institute (OCDI) at McLean Hospital and Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School.

Jason is inspired by everyone he has helped over the years. He saw his first OCD client in 2001, a woman in her 70s who had had OCD for about 50 years and made a dramatic recovery. Jason was a second-year graduate student at the time and likes to joke that he became a believer in exposure therapy because he clearly didn’t know what he was doing. 🙂

In actuality, Jason DID know what he was doing because he had expert mentorship and supervision from Nader Amir.

Technical expertise is not enough to make someone an expert. It takes a career to develop true expertise, but almost anyone can deliver expert-level clinical care for OCD and Anxiety Disorders… when they have proper mentorship. This is what has inspired CBTeam’s model.

The mission was to create an environment where clinicians would receive support and mentorship to become true experts, regardless of the type of degree, in order to improve access to high-quality care and provide meaningful career opportunities.

Jason is a licensed clinical psychologist and specializes in the treatment of OCD and Anxiety Disorders at any age. He is deeply committed to advancing the science and practice of exposure-based therapies and has expertise in ACT, Inference-based CBT, and trauma-related OCD.

Jason is one of five children in a close-knit, loving family. He was raised in Ohio and attended the Honors Tutorial College in Biological Sciences at Ohio University, where he studied functional morphology and evolutionary biology. He was always introspective and sensitive to others’ suffering, which inspired him to pursue his doctoral studies in clinical psychology at the University of Georgia.

A teacher at heart, he loves jumping into spontaneous supervision with CBTeam staff to think through how best to advance treatment. Outside of work, he enjoys being in nature, cooking, and working with his hands. Jason has an active mind that’s always seeking to understand the human experience and our place in the world. More than anything, he values time with his family, especially when it involves being out on the water or sharing a good meal.

“Just cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there.” — Radiohead

Jason enjoys working with individuals from diverse backgrounds and identities, including differences in ethnicity, socioeconomic status, nationality, immigration status, religion, gender identity, sexuality, neurodivergence, and disability. He strives to understand how each person’s unique experiences shape their mental health, and he works collaboratively to tailor treatment with respect, curiosity, and care.

Jason has published more than 34 peer-reviewed articles. His work has been read nearly 13,000 times and cited more than 1,600 times by experts in the field. He has presented his research and clinical work at major professional conferences, including the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT), the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), and the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF).

Selected publications include: