Dr. Dawn DeCunha, Ed.D., C.Psych.

Clinical practice

Dr. DeCunha leads two practices. Psychology Works provides evidence-based psychotherapy, including CBT and EMDR, to individuals, couples, and families across the Greater Toronto Area. Breakthrough Therapies, founded in 2020, focuses specifically on medicine-assisted psychotherapy for patients who have not found relief through conventional treatment.

Her approach at Breakthrough Therapies is grounded in that same evidence-based foundation, combined with specialised training in medicine-assisted and psilocybin-assisted treatment protocols. She was Lead Therapist on the Health Canada approved trial of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and she teaches and acts as a lead mentor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She holds registration with the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario.

Professional background

Dr. DeCunha's clinical career began in corrections, where she worked directly with individuals who had committed sexual offences and, in the years that followed, with their victims. This early grounding in trauma shaped a career-long specialisation in complex trauma, well before it became a mainstream focus in psychology. Her forensic work has included parenting capacity, custody, and access assessments, along with extensive clinical work with Ontario's child protection system.

A subsequent position at a school board deepened her expertise in developmental psychology, learning disabilities, and neurodevelopment, work that focused heavily on second-language acquisition among newcomer children who had experienced trauma and adversity, and its impact on their learning. Her doctoral dissertation, Metaphor Comprehension and Second Language Acquisition, completed at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, grew directly out of this work. That developmental and neuropsychological foundation later informed her clinical work with university students and with adults navigating major life and career transitions.

As both a clinical and an educational psychologist, Dr. DeCunha is registered to work across the full lifespan, from young children to seniors, a uniquely broad scope of practice reflecting her years of experience and her combined training in both fields.

When she left the school board to establish Psychology Works, she brought that educational and developmental grounding into a clinical specialisation that was, at the time, rare in private practice: acquired brain injury in children and youth. The work deepened into a broader interest in neuroplasticity and the brain's capacity for healing, and into approaches that went beyond behavioural and cognitive technique alone. It was this professional line of inquiry, not a single article read in isolation, that led her to the work of a neuroscientist in Spain, Dr. Jordi Riba, on psilocybin and neurogenesis.

Her expertise in paediatric brain injury also drew the attention of lawyers working in personal injury law, and she became a sought-after expert witness in complex cases. At a time when children with acquired brain injuries were widely assumed to simply get over it, Dr. DeCunha's reporting helped judges and lawyers understand these presentations scientifically: not as a behaviour problem, but as neurology. It is a passion she pursues to this day.