Dr. David Giella, PsyD

Professional Bio

Hi, I’m Dr. David Giella and I’m a licensed clinical psychologist with a Master’s in Applied Clinical Psychology and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. I started out at a community clinic in North Hollywood, where I was trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and spent the next 25 years in a number of different settings, including ten years working with inmates in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Today I’m the Clinical Director for WellQor Psychological Services of California, where I treat clients and manage a large team of clinical mental health professionals.

I do this work because being of service to others is what gives my life meaning. My view is that therapy is a place where any person can learn to thrive, wake up their potential, reconnect with hope, and find out what’s actually possible for them. Much of it is the work of making sense of your own world and the wider one, in a way that makes things more tolerable and leaves room for hope.

Over the course of my career I’ve had the privilege of working with people from a wide range of backgrounds, and I’ve built an approach that respects cultural experience different from my own rather than treating it as beside the point. Your culture likely shapes both what you’re struggling with and where your strength comes from, and I want to understand and use that rather than talk around it.

What I keep coming back to is that we connect through our pain, our struggles, our obstacles. We can rarely change our circumstances, but when the way we think about them shifts, everything shifts. That’s the work I want to do with you: helping you see the possibilities that exist past the obstacles. I promise to listen and to think alongside you, to try to understand you deeply, and to keep working toward what’s possible.

Dr. David Giella, PsyD