Haley Potts, PhD

Dr. Haley Potts is a licensed clinical psychologist who joined the faculty in 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Her work focuses on psychological assessment in the criminal and civil legal systems. She is a member of the Vanderbilt Forensic Evaluation Team, where she conducts forensic evaluations for the Davidson County court systems. She also welcomes private referrals for all types of forensic mental health evaluations and is particularly interested in evaluating potential psychological injuries in civil cases. 

Dr. Potts earned her undergraduate degree at Sewanee: The University of the South (YSR!). She completed a master's degree in forensic psychology from the University of Denver, where she gained experience in the treatment and evaluation of sexual offenders. Dr. Potts continued her education at the University of Alabama, where she earned a Ph.D. and a second master's degree in clinical psychology with a focus on psychology and law and worked extensively in Alabama’s state psychiatric hospitals. In 2022, she matched with Vanderbilt’s Forensic Psychiatry Clinic as their first-ever doctoral intern and was hired the following year to stay on as Vanderbilt’s inaugural postdoctoral fellow in forensic psychology. In addition to her clinical and research duties, Dr. Potts serves as the program director of the American Psychological Association’s continuing education sponsorship of Vanderbilt.

Dr. Potts’s research interests include the treatment of psychosis in restoring competency to stand trial, the role of criminal defense attorneys in the forensic mental health system(s), as well as the causes/effects of public mental health policy amid the United States’s “competency crisis.”