Born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Theresa earned her Bachelor's degree at Indiana University in Psychology with a minor in human development and family studies. After completing her bachelors, she returned home to complete her Master's Degree at Nova Southeastern University. During her internship, she started working in a residential facility for substance abuse and after graduating she began working as a primary therapist in the same facility. After a couple of years, she decided to move to Atlanta, Georgia. Theresa continued to work with substance abuse and other co-occuring disorders in a hospital setting, which eventually brought her to become a part of Sunrise Detox. 

 

Theresa has a strong passion for working with the population of substance abuse with co-occuring disorders. She specializes in substance abuse, codependency, depression, anxiety, and EMDR. She is a leader in motivational interviewing and crisis intervention and uses it to successfully detox over 1300 patients a year. She is an expert in starting the process of communication and healing between families and their loved ones. She believes that every person should be treated as a human being with the opportunity for growth, and that every person can change into the person they want to be at any time in their life. Theresa's goal is to help build a bridge for everyone to continue to get healthy once they go onto the next level of care from detox. 

 

Dean is the Clinical Director for Caron Atlanta's outpatient program. Before joining the Caron team in April of 2012, Dean served dually diagnosed patients and their families across Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio for twelve years. Dean earned his Mater's degree in Counseling Psychology from Chatham University and has been a Licensed Professional Counselor since 2005. He has had multiple therapeutic and clinical management roles within the field for the last 18 years, as well as Adjunct Faculty at local universities. Over the years, Dean has worked directly with teens, young adults, adults and families affected by addiction, cancer, mental health issues and intellectual developmental disabilities, as well as recovering healthcare professionals. 

 

A graduate of Duke University, Georgetown University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Heather maintains that her greatest accomplishment is years of recovery and remission from two often stigmatized and debilitating mental health conditions, alochol use disorder and bipolar 1. She understands firsthand the hardships of navigating a fragmented healthcare system both as a patient and as a healthcare provider, and uses her experience to advocate for her patients.

 

Heather worked in a broad range of settings prior to specializing in addiction medicine, to include full scope family practice on a Native American reservation in Cherokee, NC, family medicine in a private practice setting, and urgent care. In her current position for the past four years as Medical Director at McLeod Addictive Disease Center, she has overseen the largest opioid treatment program in North Carolina, in addition to residential and outpatient programs. 

 

Her professional interests include co-occuring disorders, healthcare reform, mindfulness for stress reduction, and functional medicine.