Paula Bloom is a practicing clinical psychologist and frequent contributor to CNN en Español, with 35 million viewers in the U.S. and Latin America. Dr. Bloom engages patients and viewers with an engaging, down-to-earth style that is irreverent yet reassuring. She has been interviewed on a wide range of subjects, including happiness, parenting, psychiatric illness, mental health, communication, workplace issues, and motivation. She has been featured  on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s show on the CNN Accent Health network and  quoted in Dr. Gupta’s blog on CNN.com. In addition, she frequently speaks about mental health to many groups, including parents, women, educators, physicians and business groups.

 

As a child of Chilean immigrants and the first person in her immediate family to be born in the United States, Dr. Bloom has an intimate understanding of cultural issues and their impact on shaping individuals and groups. She has native fluency in both English and Spanish, and does TV appearances and speaking engagements in both languages.

Dr. Bloom earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in clinical psychology from Nova Southeastern University. She has worked in a variety of settings, including suicide hotlines, locked psychiatric units, community mental health centers, medical hospitals, and private practice.

Dr. Bloom brings the same honesty and energy to mental health that Suze Orman brings to personal finance. Dr. Bloom asks people to consider which thoughts and behaviors they can afford, and which they can’t. She says all humans have a limited amount of mental health “capital,” and very little emotional “overdraft” protection. Money doesn’t grow on trees, and neither does mental health.

Dr. Bloom developed her approach to mental health after years of working with people who felt deflated, uninspired, bored, and unhappy. She has helped many people become more aware of how and where they might be wasting their emotional, spiritual, and physical energy. She challenges our assumption that being an educated, informed, skeptical thinker makes optimsim and happiness impossible or naive. 

Dr. Bloom is currently writing her first book. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, two children, and a dog named Candor.