Dr. Tonya Lawrence, MD

Dr. Lawrence travelled the “great circle route” to medicine—working as a high school English teacher and coach in the greater Boston area before playing professional basketball in Luxembourg and Belgium and then serving as an account executive for a public relations firm in Seattle all before making her way to medical school.

Along the way, she maintained her fascination with the human capacity for change and growth, especially when it comes to children and adolescents. It was this very fascination that compelled her to pursue medicine and specifically psychiatry—grounded in her strong belief in that capacity for change and growth within individuals. This hope is also the prevailing philosophy which she brings to her work with young people and which she extends to families and loved ones of her patients.

In terms of her academic background, Dr. Lawrence received her B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and obtained her Doctorate in Medicine from Ross University School of …Medicine. She completed her general adult psychiatry residency training at Drexel University College of Medicine and Hahnemann University Hospital and her child and adolescent fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

Dr. Lawrence is a Board-Certified child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist who has been serving the greater Philadelphia area since 2007. For the past thirteen years, she has worked as the Medical Director of Psychiatric Services for Child & Family Focus, Inc—a community mental health agency that works exclusively with children, adolescents and young adults. She has worked extensively with a wide range of diagnoses that include anxiety, depression, ADHD/ADD, PTSD, Autism, mood disorders and psychotic disorders. In her role as medical director at CFF over the past decade plus, she has focused largely on direct patient care but also oversaw the development of a number of programs–an outpatient clinic serving over 1,000 families, a research based first-episode psychosis program through the University of Pennsylvania serving over 100 individuals, a school-based program in twenty-six public schools in the Philadelphia region and an alternative school placement setting in Delaware county.

Overall, Dr. Lawrence is deeply committed to providing excellent evidence-based care while promoting equity in accessing mental health treatment. She believes that a multimodal approach is the best way to treat a child, and that partnering with a child’s family is essential in making lasting progress. In that way, she truly “meets young people where they are.”