I’m Dr. Dayana Jimenez, a licensed clinical psychologist (Psy.D) and the founder of Manhattan Teen & Young Adult Therapy. I’m also a Licensed School Psychologist in New York State, which means I’ve spent as much time inside classrooms and school hallways as I have inside therapy rooms and that’s shaped almost everything about how I practice.
I didn’t start out in psychology. I was a teacher first, and it was a class on Abnormal Psychology during my undergrad years at the University of Buffalo that changed my path entirely. Something clicked. I realized I wanted to be the person young people could turn to when things got hard — not after the fact, but while they were still figuring it out. That shift has stuck with me for nearly 30 years, across hospitals, schools, and community mental health settings, and from 2003 to 2022 in my own private practice before founding Manhattan Teen & Young Adult Therapy.
I’m Latina, of Ecuadorian descent, and I provide services in both English and Spanish. Being bilingual and bicultural isn’t a footnote to my work — it’s central to it. I understand, personally and professionally, what it’s like to sit between two languages, two sets of expectations, and two cultures at once. I work often with kids from first-generation and immigrant families, mixed and BIPOC households, and families where the adults and the adolescents don’t always have the same read on what’s happening at home. I don’t assume I know your story just because I’ve heard similar ones before — I ask, I listen, and I build the picture with you.
My practice focuses on teens, young adults, adolescents, and their parents. My dream client is honestly the adolescent who’s struggling with a parent or a peer relationship, who’s anxious or depressed, and who’s started to believe there’s something wrong with who they are at their core. That belief is almost never true, and a lot of my work is helping young people see their own strength — to help them “see what I see” in them, even when they can’t yet see it themselves.
Clinically, I draw from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT and DBT-A), along with Motivational Interviewing, Mindfulness-Based approaches, Family Systems work, and Trauma-Focused CBT when needed. I’m trained in Culturally Sensitive Therapy and Multicultural Counseling, and I lean on those frameworks constantly — because generic advice rarely lands for families navigating identity, immigration, generational conflict, or cultural expectations layered on top of typical teen and young adult stress.
I see a wide range of concerns: anxiety and depression, ADHD (especially the inattentive presentation that so often gets missed), perfectionism in high-achieving kids, school burnout, college transitions, social anxiety, childhood trauma and adverse experiences, complex PTSD, racial trauma, and the ordinary-but-real strain of blended families and shifting family dynamics. I also work with parents directly — offering guidance and coaching, and staying in the loop with schools when it’s useful for a client’s wellbeing.
If you ask my clients to describe a session with me in three words, they tend to land on non-judgmental, safe, and motivational. I don’t work from a script, and I don’t believe in toxic positivity or empty encouragement. What I do believe — and what I tell clients often — is that there’s always a solution to a problem. Not always an easy one, and not always a fast one, but there’s a way through. My goal is for every client to leave feeling more hopeful than when they walked in, and to walk away understanding their own strength a little more clearly each time.
I offer individual, couples, and non-traditional family therapy, both in-person and virtually, for clients across New York. I practice out-of-pocket and out-of-network, which allows me to keep sessions focused entirely on what each client needs rather than what a diagnosis code allows. If you’re looking for a therapist who understands the specific weight of navigating two cultures, two languages, and two generations under one roof, I’d be glad to talk.
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