Evidence-based care, built by the people who wrote the evidence.

The OCD & Anxiety Institute was founded on a simple belief: the treatments backed by the strongest research should be the easiest ones to find.

Why we exist

Anxiety and OCD are among the most treatable conditions in mental health, yet families and clinicians still struggle to find care that's actually grounded in the research. Too often, what's available is generic, outdated, or simply unproven.

The OCD & Anxiety Institute was built to close that gap. Our treatments, programs, and training weren't adapted from the literature after the fact, they were developed as part of it, tested in NIH-funded clinical trials, and refined over more than two decades of clinical and research work.

Our mission is straightforward: give children, teens, young adults, parents, and the clinicians who treat them direct access to the same evidence-based methods used in the field's landmark studies, delivered with warmth, without the wait, and without the guesswork.

Muniya Khanna, Ph.D.

Clinical Psychologist, Author, Researcher, CBT and Digital Behavioral Health Expert

Dr. Khanna is an internationally recognized clinical psychologist, researcher, and digital health innovator. Her work has helped establish the gold-standard treatment for pediatric anxiety and OCD worldwide.

As Founder and Director of The OCD & Anxiety Institute and former faculty at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Psychiatry, she contributed to landmark clinical trials that established gold-standard treatments, including CAMS (published in The New England Journal of Medicine), the Pediatric OCD Treatment Study (JAMA), and the Family-Based Treatment of Early Childhood OCD Study (JAMA Psychiatry). A pioneer in digital mental health, Dr. Khanna developed the first evidence-based e-learning programs for childhood anxiety, including Camp Cope-A-Lot and Child Anxiety Tales. These early programs helped establish the model for technology-enabled delivery of cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Dr. Khanna's current work focuses on the next phase of behavioral health innovation: embedding clinical intelligence into digital care platforms. Her mission is to help behavioral health organizations scale high-quality care, support clinicians and patients with expert AI guidance, and prepare provider networks for outcomes-based reimbursement models.

She is an ABCT Fellow and named ABCT Pioneer in 2021. Among her professional activities, she serves on the ABCT Digital Health Interventions Think Tank and the ABCT Research and Development Advisory Board, and has previously served on the APA Continuing Education Committee and the Board of Division 53 (Society for Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology). She is a former Associate Editor of Cognitive & Behavioral Practice and Leader of the Child Anxiety Special Interest Group of ABCT.

Dr. Khanna graduated with Honors in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Martin Seligman, earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Temple University under the mentorship of Dr. Philip Kendall, interned at UCLA under the mentorship of Dr. John Piacentini, and completed an NIH-sponsored (T-32) postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University under the mentorship of Dr. Anne Marie Albano.

View Dr. Khanna's full publication list on Google Scholar →

We can help.

View the full citation list

1. Blocher, J. B., Fujikawa, M., Sung, C., Jackson, D. C., & Jones, J. E. (2013). Computer-assisted cognitive behavioral therapy for children with epilepsy and anxiety: A pilot study. Epilepsy & Behavior, 27(1), 70–76. doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2012.12.014
2. Crane, M. E., Phillips, K. E., Maxwell, C. A., Norris, L. A., Rifkin, L. S., Blank, J. M., Sorid, S. D., Read, K. L., Swan, A. J., Kendall, P. C., & Frank, H. E. (2021). A qualitative examination of a school-based implementation of computer-assisted cognitive-behavioral therapy for child anxiety. School Mental Health, 13(2), 347–361. doi.org/10.1007/s12310-021-09424-y
3. Crawford, E. A., Salloum, A., Lewin, A. B., Andel, R., Murphy, T. K., & Storch, E. A. (2013). A pilot study of computer-assisted cognitive behavioral therapy for childhood anxiety in community mental health centers. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 27(3), 221–234. doi.org/10.1891/0889-8391.27.3.221
4. Johnco, C. J., Salloum, A., Lewin, A. B., & Storch, E. A. (2015). Refining clinical judgment of treatment response and symptom remission identification in childhood anxiety using a signal detection analysis on the Pediatric Anxiety Rating Scale. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 25(9), 674–683. doi.org/10.1089/cap.2015.0102
5. Kendall, P. C., Khanna, M. S., Edson, A., Cummings, C., & Harris, M. S. (2011). Computers and psychosocial treatment for child anxiety: Recent advances and ongoing efforts. Depression and Anxiety, 28(1), 58–66. doi.org/10.1002/da.20757
6. Kendall, P. C., Makover, H., Swan, A., Carper, M. M., Mercado, R., Kagan, E., & Crawford, E. (2016). What steps to take? How to approach concerning anxiety in youth. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 23(3), 211–229. doi.org/10.1111/cpsp.12156
7. Khanna, M. S., Carper, M. M., Harris, M. S., & Kendall, P. C. (2017). Web-based parent-training for parents of youth with impairment from anxiety. Evidence-Based Practice in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 2(1). doi.org/10.1080/23794925.2017.1283548
8. Khanna, M. S., & Kendall, P. C. (2008). Computer-assisted CBT for child anxiety: The Coping Cat CD-ROM. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 15, 159–165. View on ScienceDirect
9. Khanna, M. S., & Kendall, P. C. (2010). Computer-assisted cognitive behavioral therapy for child anxiety: Results of a randomized clinical trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(5), 737–745. doi.org/10.1037/a0019739
10. Salloum, A., Crawford, E. A., Lewin, A. B., & Storch, E. A. (2013). Consumers' and providers' perceptions of utilizing a computer-assisted cognitive behavioral therapy for childhood anxiety. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 43(1), 31–41. doi.org/10.1017/S1352465813000647
11. Salloum, A., Johnco, C., Lewin, A. B., McBride, N. M., & Storch, E. A. (2016). Barriers to access and participation in community mental health treatment for anxious children. Journal of Affective Disorders, 196, 54–61. doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.02.026
12. Smárason, O., Guzick, A. G., Goodman, W. K., Salloum, A., & Storch, E. A. (2023). Predictors and moderators of treatment outcomes for anxious children randomized to computer-assisted cognitive behavioral therapy or standard community care. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 33(8), 316–324. doi.org/10.1089/cap.2023.0019
13. Storch, E. A., Salloum, A., King, M. A., Crawford, E. A., Andel, R., McBride, N. M., & Lewin, A. B. (2015). A randomized controlled trial in community mental health centers of computer-assisted cognitive behavioral therapy versus treatment as usual for children with anxiety. Depression and Anxiety, 32(11), 843–852. doi.org/10.1002/da.22399