Our Team
Meet River’s Clinical Psychologist and CBTi Expert, Dr. Corrie Mazzeo
“You can improve your sleep.” With a decade and a half of experience supporting mental health across a variety of extremely challenging cases, Dr. Corrie Mazzeo, River’s Clinical Psychologist and CBTi Expert, loves working with patients who have sleep difficulties because she’s seen the impact of how with mindset and habit tweaks, true differences can be made in how someone sleeps — and has seen firsthand how that improves their overall lives.
Seeing people understand the importance of sleep, and how making changes to their sleep habits creates a ripple effect in their lives has been one of the most inspiring and motivating elements of her career. Here’s more about her background, in her own words.
What's your educational background?
Hi! I am Corrie Mazzeo, River’s clinical psychologist and CBTi expert. I knew that I wanted to be a psychologist from an early age and was particularly interested in helping people who have experienced trauma. I always felt that if someone had been through a trauma, I could be a witness to their pain and help guide them through it. I graduated from University of South Carolina with a Bachelor’s in psychology, and then went to The Chicago School where I received my Master's and Doctorate. After completing my education, I moved back to the Cleveland area (where I am from) and worked for the Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center for 13 years. One of the amazing benefits of training and working within the VA system was the opportunity to practice in a variety of settings, including home based primary care, general mental health, substance abuse, residential care, PTSD, sleep, and primary care.
I believe in using evidence based treatments, which means using the treatments that have been proven through research and clinical outcomes to be the most effective for a specific condition. I am certified by the VA in a variety of evidence-based treatments including motivational interviewing, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy. One of my biggest career accomplishments was creating and practicing the integration of mental health into our primary care clinic. This increased access to care for those who were concerned about stigma, didn’t need long term psychiatric care, or had chronic illness and needed support, and allowed for these patients to be seen immediately following their primary care appointments rather than making a separate appointment for follow up.
How did you get into cognitive behavioral therapy, particularly with a focus on insomnia?
While working at the VA with a focus on veterans from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF — Afghanistan), and Operation New Dawn (OND — a new phase in these wars), I was offered an opportunity to learn to treat insomnia, as most veterans with PTSD have insomnia that doesn't always get better with PTSD treatment. I was trained by the VA in CBTi, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, which is the most effective treatment for insomnia. After a 6 month process of being supervised on cases by my consultant, I was certified in CBTi.
I have been practicing CBTi for over 10 years. I have used CBTi in a variety of settings and with extremely difficult cases such as veterans who have severe PTSD and patients with co-morbid mental health and medical issues. I also co-lead a CBTi workshop and training program at the Cleveland VA, providing training and supervision in this treatment for about 50 providers. Since leaving the VA, I have worked in the digital health space creating content, programming and providing telehealth support to patients.
I have found that helping patients better understand the underlying causes of their insomnia and use specific interventions to address those issues, has the potential to not only improve the patient’s sleep, but also their overall health, mood, relationships among others. It’s rare to find one area in a person’s life that can unlock so much potential in other areas of their lives. And to be able to do this with a brief treatment with fast results- it’s so rewarding.
What's your favorite/most interesting fact about treating insomnia?
I have worked in many areas of psychology, but CBTi may be my favorite treatment to work with. It's simple, to the point, and it works. It can produce incredibly impactful outcomes in a short time frame, with easy-to-follow guidelines. Sleep is at the center of health, and treating insomnia can completely change a patient's life.
What's the most common question you hear from patients? And what’s your answer?
Why can't I get good sleep? For the vast majority of patients, stress, overthinking, and bad habits are the hallmarks of their sleep problems. There are many individual factors that go into a patient's difficulty sleeping, and each needs to be reviewed and addressed to improve sleep. There is no "magic pill" or single behavior that will improve sleep. You have to make multiple changes at the same time, and it’s incredibly important to remain consistent with them. That will improve your sleep.
What advice would you give to someone who's experiencing insomnia?
Start treatment for your sleep difficulties. Most issues can be improved or resolved, and that leads to a vast improvement in many areas of your life. Sleep touches every aspect of us: our mood, our relationships, our work productivity, our health. I encourage people to put the effort in to make changes — even if they feel hard at first. It's worth it to get your life back.
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