

Headway connects Newtown residents across neighborhoods including Sandy Hook, Hawleyville, and Head O' Meadow with 184 providers specializing in talk therapy and medication management. Sessions are conducted flexibly in-person or virtually, covered by 70+ insurance plans, allowing clients to focus on their care. Get started with a free intake call and find availability as soon as tomorrow.
I am an experienced behavioral health provider and health educator dedicated to treating patients with respect, dignity, and a focus on overall wellbeing, personal goals, recovery, and safety.
My professional background includes over 13 years as a nurse clinician and nurse practitioner for the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) treating adult patients. Additionally, I spent 5 years at MAAS in New Haven specializing in opioid and alcohol use disorders, and I have provided outpatient behavioral health treatment for adults of all ages at LifeBridge Community Services for over 5 years.
My path into psychiatry began in surgery, where I originally planned to become a neurosurgeon. During medical school, I participated in a diving expedition and later worked on the Biosphere 2 project — experiences that immersed me in extreme environments and sparked a deep curiosity about how people think, feel, and relate to one another under pressure. That curiosity led me to psychiatry, and since then I have combined rigorous medical training with psychodynamic study to better understand and treat the whole person, not just the symptoms. I provide telehealth psychiatric care to adults, adolescents, and children in Massachusetts and Connecticut, with a special focus on trauma, treatment-resistant conditions, and pediatric psychiatry, including ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorders. Many of the people I work with have felt unheard or discouraged in previous treatment — and I take that seriously.
I am Franchesca Ali (DNP, PMHNP-BC), a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner dedicated to providing wholistic care to adults. I offer medication management and psychiatric evaluations. My practice specialties include, but are not limited to, anxiety, depression, ADD/ADHD, OCD, mood disorders, insomnia, peri-partum, college mental health, life transitions, and burn-out. I earned my Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from Columbia University, along with a Psychiatric Certification from Hunter College in New York.
At the heart of my practice is the belief that patients deserve to be heard. I am committed to providing thoughtful, collaborative mental health care where patients feel supported, respected and empowered throughout their journey toward mental wellness. I provide psychiatric evaluations, medication management, supportive therapy and evidence-based interventions for conditions including anxiety, depression, ADHD, mood disorders, trauma related concerns and life stressors. I have ten years of experience working in the mental health field in inpatient, outpatient residential, long-term care, tele-health and community mental health settings.











Headway makes it easy to find support for your mental health — from finding the right provider, to understanding costs, to scheduling with ease.
Use left and right arrow keys to switch tabs. Press Shift+Tab to return to the tab list from links in the selected tab.