Deborah Offner is a clinical psychologist with expertise in adolescent development, student mental health, and school life.
She serves as Consulting Psychologist at Beacon Academy in Boston, a 14-month program between eighth and ninth grade that prepares students from communities with limited resources for entry into independent day and boarding high schools. She also provides ongoing professional consultation to several independent middle and secondary schools.
Dr. Offner maintains an active clinical practice where she works with middle, high school, and college students, and their families.
About Dr. Offner
Dr. Offner’s private practice is in Newton, Massachusetts. She’s available to travel for speaking engagements throughout the United States.
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Dr. Offner brings twenty-five years of experience in mental health, K-12, and higher education to her work with individuals, families, and institutions. She publishes and presents on adolescent mental health, faculty wellbeing and student affairs at regional and national conferences and on campus.
From 2003-2017, Dr. Offner was Consulting Psychologist and, subsequently, Dean of Students at The Commonwealth School, a co-educational college preparatory school in Boston. She has also worked in the counseling centers of Boston-area colleges, including Boston University, Boston College, and Emerson College. Dr. Offner has taught undergraduate and graduate psychology courses, as well as a self-designed elective for high school students. Most recently, she taught Adolescent Psychology at Boston College-Lynch School of Education (Spring 2022).
Dr. Offner maintains an independent clinical and consulting practice in her home in Newton Centre, where she works exclusively with adolescents, young adults, and their families.
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Dr. Offner holds a BA in Psychology & Sociology from Wesleyan University and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Boston University. She also studied Social Psychology at London School of Economics. While at Boston University, Dr. Offner received specialized training in assessing and treating children, adolescents, and adults in various settings, including psychiatric hospitals, partial hospital programs, community mental health clinics, and college counseling centers. Dr. Offner has also obtained advanced post-doctoral training in psychotherapy theory and technique at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England (PINE).
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Dr. Offner has been a member of Beacon Academy’s Corporation since 2019. Until 2017, she served on the Board of Directors of the Max Rosenfeld Trust. This foundation provides educational scholarships and loans to low-income Jewish women in and around Boston.
From 2010-2013, Dr. Offner was a volunteer psychotherapist in the Boston chapter of A Home Within, a national organization that provides pro bono mental health services to children in foster care. From 1998-2003, she provided ongoing consultation to the Kindergarten faculty of The Florida Ruffin School as part of a grassroots pro bono program initiated in response to mental health service cutbacks in the Brookline, MA Public Schools. Dr. Offner also previously coordinated the parent education speaker series at The Rashi School, an independent Reform Jewish Day School in Dedham.
Credentials
