Personal-Counselor

Professional Biography

I’ve been a practicing psychotherapist for the past 20 years and have been licensed in the state of Maryland for the past 16 years. I work with individuals, couples, and families. I am 49 years old and live just outside of Washington, DC, in Bethesda, Maryland with my husband, my 13-year old daughter from my first marriage, and our cat, “Gracie.” My professional name for more than 20 years was Laura S. Hitchcock, Ph.D. but I changed my last name to Diallo after I remarried in 1999.

I was born and raised in the borough of Queens in New York City. A music student from age 5, I attended the famous High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, majoring in piano and violin. I played the violin professionally in the Queens Symphony Orchestra in New York and planned a career as a professional musician. However, when I took my first college psychology class, I fell in love with the field of psychology.

I received my bachelor’s degree in 1972 from Barnard College of Columbia University. I majored in psychology, graduated summa cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in both junior and senior years. I began graduate school at Princeton University, studying experimental psychology but realized I was more interested in clinical and counseling psychology. I received my master’s degree in psychology in 1975 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. The following year, I moved with my ex-husband to Austin, Texas and continued my graduate studies in counseling psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Once there, I found myself drawn to a specialty field within psychology called “behavioral medicine” or “medical psychology.” I received my Ph.D. in 1982 and won the award for the best doctoral dissertation of the year. I did my doctoral dissertation on the topic of how psychological methods can help prepare patients to cope with having elective surgery. In 1980-81, as part of my doctoral training, I worked for a year as an intern at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Washington, DC. The next year I returned to Austin to do a post-graduate fellowship in behavioral medicine/medical psychology. During this fellowship year, I taught medical students and residents about psychological aspects of pain management and coping with acute and chronic illness. I also developed two new patient education programs: one for helping patients cope with chronic pain and the other for helping patients cope with elective surgery.

After completing my fellowship year, my ex-husband and I decided to return to the Washington, DC area and make it our permanent home. I received my Maryland license and opened my own private psychotherapy practice in 1984. That year, I also began doing volunteer work for a non-profit organization -- the National Chronic Pain Outreach Association (NCPOA). In 1986, I was hired as its Executive Director and later was hired as the Managing Editor of the association’s quarterly newsletter, Lifeline. For the next 10 years, under my former name, Laura S. Hitchcock, Ph.D., I was the Executive Director and Managing Editor at NCPOA while at the same time, I maintained a part-time private psychotherapy practice.

Over the last 15 years, I have become known as an expert in the field of chronic pain management. A study I conducted with two other researchers, focusing on the quality of life of pain patients, was published in a peer-reviewed professional journal, The Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, in 1994.

In addition, for many years I have lectured extensively on the subject of chronic pain and served as a consultant at the Pain Research Clinic at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland for several years. I continued my work with NCPOA for a decade until 1995, when I returned to private practice full-time.

While some of the clients I work with in my private practice seek my help in coping with chronic pain or some other medical condition, many other clients seek my help for problems such as stress, anxiety, and depression. In addition to working with individuals, I also work with couples and families on resolving relationship problems.

If you would like to view my three-page curriculum vitae (CV), which contains detailed information about my professional accomplishments, please click here.