Meet Dennard McInnis, LCSW.
I'm Dennard McInnis, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and founder of McInnis Mental Health. I work primarily with men, young adults, and older teens who keep finding themselves in patterns they understand but haven't been able to change.
I don't start by asking what's wrong with you. I want to understand how what you're doing came to make sense. Then we figure out whether it still does.
How I work
My style is active, curious, and direct. I don't think therapy should be an hour of explaining your life while I occasionally nod and ask how something made you feel.
We'll pay attention to what's actually happening in your life and what you do when it happens. I'll ask questions, tell you what I'm noticing, and challenge you when I think something doesn't add up.
People rarely change because someone explains their problem more clearly. They change when they do something different and reality gives them new evidence.
Sometimes that means understanding something differently. Sometimes it means doing something differently and seeing what happens.
Who I work with
I work primarily with men, young adults, and older teenage boys, 17 and up.
A lot of the people I work with have already thought about their problems quite a bit. Some have been in therapy before. They can often explain exactly what they do and even why they do it. Then they go home and do it again.
I also work well with men who are tired of carrying everything alone and don't have much interest in therapy that feels vague or disconnected from the reason they came in.
What therapy is like →Learn about therapy for men in Austin →
Professional background
Before opening my private practice, my work included juvenile justice, substance use treatment, psychiatric and emergency mental health, hospital social work, and clinical supervision. I also worked in quality assurance and utilization management in behavioral health.
Those settings shaped the way I work. They taught me to stay calm when things aren't calm, to pay close attention to the difference between observation and interpretation, and to recognize that understanding a problem isn't the same thing as being able to change it.
I earned a Master of Arts in Criminal Justice from the University of Louisiana at Monroe in 2006 and a Master of Science in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. I've been practicing for 16 years and am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor.
Writing and Editorial Work
Dennard edited and published The Father's Silence: H. P. Lovecraft and the Shadow of the Father, a collection of previously unpublished scholarship by his father, literature professor John L. McInnis III.
Dennard's introduction and editorial work focus on preserving the distinction between what the historical record establishes and what interpretation might add. That same concern with evidence, context, and restraint informs his later development of the McInnis Method.
The McInnis Method
Over time, the way I worked developed into what I call the McInnis Method.
It starts with a simple idea:
Most of what looks like the problem started as a solution.
Patterns don't come from nowhere. At some point, what you're doing made sense. The problem is that it can keep making sense to you long after the situation has changed.
The work is figuring out how the pattern got built, what keeps it running, and what happens when you do something the old rule would not have allowed.
Explore the McInnis Method →A conversation is a good place to begin.
I see clients in person in Austin and provide telehealth to clients in Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Nevada.
The free consultation is a short conversation about what's going on and what you're hoping therapy might help with. It also gives both of us a chance to see whether the way I work makes sense for you.
If it seems like a fit, we'll talk about what comes next. If it doesn't, that's useful to know too.
Schedule a free consultation