Stout completed her professional training in psychology at the McLean Psychiatric Hospital and obtained her Ph.D. at Stony Brook University.
Her work in psychology and cultural commentary has appeared in The Boston Globe and HuffPost, and she is a contributing writer for The New Republic.
[3] Stout is in private practice as a clinical psychologist in Boston, where she specializes in recovery from psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.
[4] Stout has written a number of books on psychology, translated into many languages,[5] including The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us, The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness, and The Paranoia Switch: How Fear Politics Rewires Our Brains and Reshapes Our Behavior and How We Can Reclaim Our Courage.
In The Paranoia Switch, which concerns the behavioral and neurological effects of fear politics, she coins the term "limbic war", and discusses the relationship between recovery from psychological trauma and the development of courage.