Dina Cuervo, PhD

Dina Cuervo, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of California. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Loma Linda University (APA accredited). During her clinical training, she worked at a substance abuse treatment center providing outpatient and inpatient group therapy along with addiction severity assessments to an adult population. She completed her doctoral internship at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York providing individual and group therapy to youth with substance abuse disorders, trauma, depression and severe behavioral issues. She completed her post-doctoral Fellowship at the University of California San Francisco-General Hospital consulting and performing clinical services to bring trauma sensitive practices to an urban inner-city school including mindfulness practices to teachers. Dr. Dina has extensive training in Gestalt Therapy, which focuses on the individual’s unique experience in the present moment and the manner in which behavioral patterns have been created to adapt to one’s environment. Although she is rooted in Gestalt Therapy, she has also received extensive training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) in her early graduate career at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. She has extensive experience and specialized training in treating individuals who have experienced trauma, including Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). She has worked many years at a Children’s Hospital providing therapy to children, teens, and families treating youth who have been in the foster care system, experienced trauma, bullying, anxiety, depression, self-harm behaviors, ADHD and have an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Dr. Dina has comparable experience providing therapy to adult and youth populations. In addition to psychotherapy, her clinical experience includes psychological and psycho-educational evaluations. Her years of experience conducting psycho-educational evaluations for school districts, helping parents advocate for special education services in the schools, and consulting with school personnel on ways to support a struggling child/teen in the classroom, gives her a deeper understanding of the interaction between the school environment and a child’s emotional struggle. She has also conducted research and presented in national conferences in the area of child psychology, developmental trauma, and secondary traumatic stress. She has led countless groups and amongst those specific to trauma, included crisis support groups for those impacted by the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting and support/process groups for teachers working with traumatized students to cope with the personal impact on them.