By: Dr. Deena Moustafa
Key Takeaways
- Dr. Deena Moustafa published four books through Bellissima Publishing between 2009 and 2011, and founded her behavioral health company seven years after the last one.
- Two of the four are written for families navigating autism: The Mystery Puzzle: Autism and You Are Not Alone: A Message to Parents of Children With Autism.
- The books were written for parents rather than practitioners, a choice that put her in a small category of clinical authors writing outside the professional literature.
- Go Behavioral, the company she founded in 2018, now delivers services across California and Florida, in homes, schools, clinics and community settings.
- Her second business, Cozyino, applies the same audience instinct to apparel, designing clothing with sensory sensitivities in mind.
- The through line across all of it is a reader she has never stopped writing for: the parent who has just been handed a diagnosis and does not know what happens next.
Most clinicians who write a book write it after the practice is built. Dr. Deena Moustafa, who founded the behavioral health provider Go Behavioral in 2018, did it the other way round.
Her four titles came out between 2009 and 2011, all through Bellissima Publishing. Two of them appeared in 2009: You Are Not Alone: A Message to Parents of Children With Autism and Depression: The Silent Screaming. The Mystery Puzzle: Autism followed in January 2010. Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers: The Marriage Manual arrived in January 2011.
Go Behavioral, the company she still leads, was incorporated in 2018. Seven years separate the last book from the first clinic.
That order matters more than it might look. It means the books were not a marketing asset produced by an established practice. They were written by someone who had decided, well before she had an organisation behind her, that the audience she wanted to reach was the family rather than the field.
The Reader She Chose
There is a large and growing professional literature on autism. Peer-reviewed journals, textbooks, certification curricula, continuing education. Almost all of it is written by clinicians for other clinicians, and almost none of it is written at the moment a parent most needs something to read.
That moment usually arrives in a car park, or a kitchen, in the hours after an assessment. A family has a diagnosis, a stack of paperwork, a waiting list, and a set of terms nobody has explained. What they generally do not have is a book written for them.
You Are Not Alone is addressed to exactly that reader, and the title does most of the work. It is not a promise about outcomes. It is a statement about isolation, which is the thing families describe most consistently and which the clinical literature is least equipped to address.
Moustafa has been explicit about where that concern comes from. “Mental health is a deeply personal and professional passion of mine, especially when it comes to supporting parents of children with autism and women on the autism spectrum,” she has said. “I’ve seen firsthand how much pressure and emotional strain caregivers face, often silently, and how many autistic women struggle with late diagnoses, masking, and mental health challenges that are misunderstood or overlooked.”
The second half of that sentence points at the other underwritten subject in her catalogue. Late diagnosis in women is now a well-documented pattern, and it was considerably less so when she was writing.
Four Books, One Preoccupation
Read together, the titles look less scattered than they first appear.
Depression: The Silent Screaming is about a condition people carry without announcing it. The Mystery Puzzle: Autism takes on a subject the general reader is assumed to find opaque and treats the opacity as the problem to solve rather than a reason to write for specialists. Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers: The Marriage Manual addresses the relationship that most often absorbs the strain when a family is under pressure, and which almost never gets its own chapter in a book about a child’s diagnosis.
You Are Not Alone is the one that names the through line outright.
None of the four is a memoir, and none of them trades on a personal disclosure. They are practical books, which is a harder register to write in than the confessional one and a considerably less fashionable one.
What Happened Next
The company that followed reads like the same instinct applied to service design rather than prose.
Go Behavioral was founded in 2018 as a single clinic and now operates across multiple California locations and a cluster of Florida ones, delivering therapy in homes, schools, clinics, community settings and virtually. Its services include early intervention, school-age support, social skills groups, parent training and collaboration on individualised education programmes, alongside consulting work with schools and employers on neurodiverse workplace culture. A training arm runs certification courses for practitioners, delivered in more than one language by a multilingual team.
The company’s own account of its growth is unglamorous and specific. A single clinic became a multi-state provider, in its words, because families know they are at the centre of everything the organisation does.
Her second business extends the pattern into a different category entirely. Cozyino makes sensory-friendly and adaptive apparel, built around design decisions that sound minor and are not: no tags, flat seams, soft breathable fabric, adaptive openings that let a garment go on and come off without a fight. It is clothing designed with sensory sensitivities in mind rather than a therapeutic product, and the brand is careful about the difference.
Moustafa has described the connection directly. “My background as a BCBA, professor, and founder of Go Behavioral played a significant role in the creation of Cozyino,” she has said. “The brand was inspired by years of working directly with autistic and sensory-sensitive individuals and recognizing the need for clothing that combines comfort, function, inclusion, and style.”
A clinician who writes for parents, then builds services for families, then makes clothes for the same households, is not diversifying. She is refusing to leave the room.
Why The Books Still Matter
Books published in 2009 to 2011 are, by the standards of a fast-moving field, old. The diagnostic criteria have changed since. So has the prevalence data, the funding landscape, and much of the vocabulary the community uses about itself.
What has not changed is the shape of the problem the books were written for. A family still receives a diagnosis with very little scaffolding around it. The waiting lists are longer now, not shorter. The professional literature has grown and is still not addressed to the person sitting in the car park.
That is the durable part of the work, and it is the part a practitioner-author is unusually placed to do. Writing for parents is not a simplification of writing for clinicians. It is a different job, with a different failure mode, and most people qualified to do it never try.
Moustafa’s four titles are listed in the Bellissima Publishing catalogue and distributed through Ingram.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Many Books Has Dr. Deena Moustafa Written?
Four, published between 2009 and 2011 through Bellissima Publishing: Depression: The Silent Screaming, The Mystery Puzzle: Autism, Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers: The Marriage Manual, and You Are Not Alone: A Message to Parents of Children With Autism.
Which Of Her Books Are About Autism?
Two. The Mystery Puzzle: Autism is a general introduction to the subject, and the other is written specifically for parents of children with autism.
Are The Books Written For Parents Or For Professionals?
For parents and families. They sit outside the professional and peer-reviewed literature, which is written primarily for practitioners.
What Does Go Behavioral Do?
Go Behavioral is a behavioral health provider founded in 2018, delivering services for children and young people with autism and ADHD across California and Florida, in homes, schools, clinics, community settings, and virtually. Services include early intervention, school-age support, social skills groups, parent training, and IEP collaboration.
What Is Cozyino?
Cozyino is a direct-to-consumer apparel brand making sensory-friendly and adaptive clothing, designed with features including no tags, flat seams, and adaptive openings. It is a comfort and fit product rather than a therapeutic one.
Where Can The Books Be Found?
All four are listed in the Bellissima Publishing catalogue and distributed through Ingram, and are available through major online retailers.
Dr. Deena Moustafa, Ph.D., BCBA, is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, associate professor, and the founder and CEO of Go Behavioral, an ABA provider she launched in 2018 to serve children with autism and developmental needs across California and Florida. She is also the founder of Cozyino, a sensory-friendly and adaptive apparel brand, and the author of four books, including You Are Not Alone: A Message to Parents of Children With Autism.
Disclaimer: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not provide medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice. It should not be used as a substitute for evaluation, diagnosis, or treatment from a qualified healthcare professional. Readers should consult an appropriate professional regarding individual health or behavioral concerns. References to services, books, and products do not constitute an endorsement or guarantee of results.
