James F Dean, PhD

We went to Dr. Dean to help us deal with our 7-​year-​old son’s explosive behavior, due to ADHD and a learning disability, and its impact on our family, which also includes a 5-​year-​old son. Dr. Dean is very calm, perceptive, and has a sense of humor. Over the course of 7 months of 45-​minute weekly sessions, he helped us come to better understand and deal with both our older son and his younger brother, and our own reactions to their behavior, which had been out-​of-​control at home. We ended on much more stable ground – with a better understanding and appreciation of what we’re dealing with.
Family therapy with children, at least in our case, meant Dr. Dean observed the boys and us playing together, and then in separate sessions with just the adults, talking about what was happening. Dr. Dean was always very perceptive. His style, at least with our family, was very low key and quiet when around the boys – some might say a bit Freudian, in that he didn’t do much probing and let us solve things in our time.
A major plus is that he takes health insurance, which is almost unheard of.

I brought my family as we were concerned our son was displaying what i thought were flags for sensory issues and impulse control. He often fell asleep during our sessions and ultimately told us our son was fine and my husband and i were the problem. years later (and why i am writing this), my husband confided in me that he told him to divorce me. Our son was diagnosed with ODD, ADHD and OCD, none of which he noticed.

On my first visit to James Dean, in the middle of explaining my entire situation he answered his phone no fewer than 3 times. All three times were his wife, who was calling because their daughter had a boo-​boo and wanted to complain to daddy about it. In the miniscule time frame of 30 minutes to explain yourself for the first time to a pyscho-​therapist, the last thing you want is for him to eat up your time with his personal phone calls.