Services

Treatment Philosophy

As a physician, my expertise is in understanding how the mind and body, the mental and physical health, interlink with one other.

I work collaboratively with my patients. I actively solicit feedback in assessing what works and what doesn’t work. As a child psychiatrist, I place high value on how early developmental experiences impact the ways a person currently responds to conflict in his, her, or their life. 

During the evaluation, I evaluate for medical illnesses masquerading as or contributing to psychiatric symptoms, and vice-versa. To this end, I may order laboratory, radiological, or other diagnostic testing when necessary. As a physician, I sometimes conduct a physical exam, including a neurological examination, to search for any diseases that may be causing or contributing to the problem that you’re coming to me for. I will collaborate with your primary care physicians and your other medical specialists to if necessary.

Working together, I will help you decide when and whether a medication, supplement, or lifestyle modification may be useful by offering my study of the scientific literature in psychiatry on what works, what doesn’t, and in which context each applies. I provide talk therapy to better understand and explore those problems with you. If I am not working with you in therapy, I will collaborate with your therapist.

I practice evidence-based medicine. This means that I keep up to date on the latest scientific literature for diagnosis, medications, integrative, and lifestyle interventions that have been shown to help in clinical trials. I will guide you through what the research tells us and my interpretation of it. I collaborate with patients and, if involved, their families to tailor an approach combines the best research evidence, my clinical experience, and most importantly, your values and goals. I do not prescribe medications, either new or continuing, or recommend interventions when the risks outweigh the benefits.

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Areas of Specialty:

• Trouble concentrating, problems with focus, or memory concerns. This includes an evaluation for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
• Depression, burnout, stress, feelings of being overwhelmed. I also evaluate and treat for bipolar disorder.
• Anxiety, worrying, avoiding school, work, or social situations, trouble speaking in social situations.
• Obsessions (recurrent, intrusive thoughts) and compulsions (impulses or ritualistic behaviors), most commonly associated with obsessive compulsive disorder.
• Difficulty with managing thoughts, feelings, and actions (including aggression, irritability, violence, self-harm) in autistic individuals or those with an intellectual disability, including in those who are minimally- or non-verbal.
• Neuropsychiatric conditions such as functional neurological disorder (also known as conversion disorder), catatonia, dementia, as well as mental health symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury such as concussions, brain cancer, autoimmune conditions, epilepsy, and rare genetic disorders.
• Complex medical conditions: those on multiple medications that may interact with the psychiatric ones, autoimmune conditions, cardiac or pulmonary disease, infections such as HIV and on medications to treat or prevent it, transplant evaluations, bariatric surgery evaluations, plastic surgery evaluations.

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Comprehensive Diagnostic Evaluation

90 minutes

In this initial session, we will review your current symptoms and impacts on well-being; medical/surgical/psychiatric history including past treatments; familial and social background; and current life circumstances. I will provide you with the most appropriate diagnoses, though in certain situations we may need to refine and clarify this with further time.

As a physician, I may recommend laboratory studies such as blood or genetic tests, brain scan studies, conduct a physical examination or a neuropsychiatric examination, or obtain additional testing if indicated to thoroughly investigate the concerns that brought you into treatment.

Recommendations for medications, psychotherapy along with lifestyle and behavioral changes will discussed during the comprehensive evaluation. If you have a primary care physician or other specialists involved in your care, I offer to collaborate with them at your preference for an additional fee.

No treatment relationship will necessarily emerge from this first meeting. If we decide that we are a good fit for each other, we will then develop a treatment relationship where I can be considered your doctor/psychiatrist.

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Follow-Up Visit

25 minutes

We will regularly check in to address any need for changes to your treatment plan, including but not limited to refining your diagnoses, ongoing laboratory tests such as monitoring medication levels, medication dose adjustments, tracking progress toward your treatment goals as well as obstacles that hinder that progress, updated behavioral and environmental interventions, and any necessary referrals.

Typically, those with established therapists see me for this purpose or in those whose condition has been stabilized enough to the point where infrequent appointments are appropriate. Should your situation stabilize enough, we may get you off of medications or transfer the prescription over to your primary care physician to continue your care, but this will be discussed at length before any decision is made.

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Talk Therapy with or without Medications

50 minutes

The purpose of psychotherapy is psychological change. This is a collaborative process as patients are not passive recipients of care. They are active agents of their own change. The goal would be to enhance the person’s agency and to bring about lasting change. This can mean that the individual will learn to accept themselves with their limitations and to improve their overall resiliency, sense of agency, tolerance of a wide range of thoughts and emotions, self-continuity, realistic self-esteem, capacity for intimacy, moral sensibilities, and awareness of others as having separate subjectivities. I believe therapy should identify core issues and begin to make a difference from the get-go.

If you do not currently have a therapist, I can provide therapy and if we decide together that medications would be beneficial, I can provide the combined treatment as well.

In my professional opinion and from established research, almost all patients benefit from some form of talk therapy. Patients in this track require more regular appointments to fully benefit. Frequency will often start weekly, and longer-term may space out to biweekly to monthly. If more intense therapy is recommended, the frequency of therapy can increase to twice or three times a week depending on availability. Should your situation stabilize and improve, or you find an alternate therapist, we can discuss switching over to the medication management track. 

Psychotherapy Modalities:

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
• Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic Therapy
• Mentalization Based Therapy (MBT)
• Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE)
• Parent Management Training (PMT)

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One-Day TMS (ONE-D Protocol)

For patients who haven’t responded to medication

A full course of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) completed in a single day, combining an FDA-cleared stimulation method with neuroplasticity-enhancing medications. Designed for treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, and OCD. No weeks of daily clinic visits. Learn more at my TMS website.

Prescriptions

It is my policy to write prescriptions and refills when you come for a scheduled appointment. It is a shared responsibility between both patient and provider to monitor medication refills, so as to minimize the need for prescribing medication outside of office appointments. If you do require a prescription outside of appointments, please contact me directly rather than the pharmacy.