Dyna Tucker

I graduated with my Bachelor's in Psychology from Franklin and Marshall College in 2009, and I've always been in the social services field. I did different things like working with different populations in schools, adolescents, and younger kids. After I got my Master's in Social Work from Long Island University Post Campus, I've worked in many different fields. I've worked in the courts running an alternative to incarceration program, I've worked in the schools running different after-school programs, and I've also worked in foster care. I worked for the city doing more macro-level work, doing workshops for parents, teachers, and students on all things mental health-related that affect the way a student shows up in the classroom. That was the last position I had before I went full-time private practice. I started getting into the private practice world around 2015 or 2016 by working for another private practice, and that kind of piqued my interest in terms of starting my own. I started my practice as a solo practitioner in 2018 while working full-time for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Things came to a head where I had to decide if I was going to go full-time private practice or stick to my daytime job, because doing both was becoming a lot. I made the decision in 2020 to go full-time private practice, which was sort of by accident because I had made the decision and then two weeks later the shutdowns began. It ended up being a bit of a blessing in disguise because more and more mental health was coming to the forefront, and I was able to really grow my practice pretty quickly. In 2021, I grew it to a group practice by taking on two other clinicians, and by that fall, my partner and I got into an office space in Lynnbrook, Long Island. I've been full-time private practice since 2020, about 6 years now, and I'm able to have a practice that is still doing well and also provide a learning space for upcoming mental health professionals as interns.