Meet DeAnna Meckling-Peruto, MS

DeAnna is a master’s level clinician who recently graduated with a Master of Science degree in Community and Trauma Counseling awarded from Thomas Jefferson University. During her time in graduate school, she pursued a specialization in Child Trauma and Play Therapy to cultivate the skills necessary to meet her clients where they are at the developmental level and to foster communication with younger clients through their primary language of play. She was initiated into her university’s chapter of Chi Sigma Iota (The International Counseling Academic and Professional Honor Society); and designated a major portion of her academic course work on examining research on child and adolescent grief after the death of a caregiver, cross-cultural reports of mental health and intergenerational trauma, impacts of relational trauma and domestic violence, and analyzing studies on mental health presentations and developmental trauma in child and adolescent populations. She graduated with a Master of Arts in Psychology from Temple University in 2018 with a minor in Cognitive Neuroscience.

DeAnna completed her clinical internship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she provided counseling services to youth in the Community Violence and Trauma Support Program. In this role, she provided individual, trauma-informed counseling to youth on a weekly basis and acted as a co-facilitator in an adolescent group therapy program called Building Resilience After Violent Experiences (BRAVE). In her professional experience, she has worked as a Therapeutic Riding Instructor where she taught horse-back riding lessons to youth with disabilities. Her goal when working with students was to provide animal-assisted therapeutic support and to utilize aspects of the riding experience to enrich social, emotional, cognitive, and physical functioning.

In her counseling practice, DeAnna takes an eclectic approach to client care that incorporates techniques and interventions from a variety of different therapeutic modalities to find an approach that best aligns with a person’s individual needs and goals for counseling. Her primary counseling modalities include person-centered, internal family systems (IFS), strengths-based, cognitive-behavioral (CBT), and play therapy. Her clinical areas of expertise include trauma and stressor related disorders, depression, anxiety, neurodivergence, personality disorders, life transitions, grief and loss, relational concerns, and LGBTQI+.