Dr. Duval is a clinical psychologist with over thirty years of experience, and a significant part of her practice is devoted to adolescents and young adults — roughly ages 16 to 25. She brings a psychodynamic lens to the anxieties particular to this generation: image cultivation and comparison amplified by social media, and real fear about an unstable economic, environmental, and political future.

A pivotal stage, under new pressures

While Dr. Duval works with people of all ages, she has a strong affinity for adolescents and young adults — a stage of immense growth and change, and also one where particular challenges can stall forward motion.

This life stage has always been demanding, but recent years have added something new. Online platforms and social media now "connect" young people in place of in-person experience, and a deep worry about the instability of the world — economic, environmental, political — has left many more fearful and pessimistic about their futures than any generation before them.

Meeting you where you are

Adolescents and people in their early twenties don't always extend trust easily, and the therapeutic relationship with them asks for a particular kind of patience and respect. Dr. Duval's affinity for this stage — her genuine interest in possible growth as opposed to an agenda to correct or direct — is much of what allows that trust to take root.

When fear about the future gets in the way of the present…

That pessimism tends to pull in two opposite and equally costly directions. On one side, avoidance — backing away from the milestones that mark a life moving forward. On the other, recklessness — a sense that the world's gone to pieces and we're doomed anyway, so why not.

Dr. Duval's work helps young people find the ground in between: a place where these fears are acknowledged and taken seriously, not dismissed, and where they no longer harden into hopelessness. The aim isn't to argue someone out of a clear-eyed view of the world, but to help them hold it while still believing they can find success and happiness within it.

‍If you're a young person — or the parent of one —

who is looking for someone who takes seriously both the real pressures of this moment and also the definite possibility of a good life within it, this is the work Dr. Duval offers. It suits those who want not just to feel less anxious, but to understand themselves more fully at a stage when that understanding goes a long way.