Treatment Services

Treatment Philosophy

As a medically-trained physician, my expertise lies in understanding how the mind and body, the mental and physical health, interlink with each other.

I strive to 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. 

Working together, I will help you decide when and whether a medication, supplement, or lifestyle modification may be useful by offering my expertise from the scientific literature on what works, what doesn’t, and in which context each applies. I provide talk therapy to conceptualize the problems you are having and explore insight and/or solutions to those problems with you. I will spend time getting to know you and learning about your life circumstances and treatment goals. If I am not working with you in therapy, I will collaborate with your therapist.

An astute psychiatrist keeps an eye out for medical illnesses masquerading as or contributing to psychiatric symptoms, and vice-versa. During the evaluation process, I may order laboratory, radiological, or other diagnostic testing when necessary. As a physician, I may conduct a physical exam including a neurological examination to search for any diseases that may be causing or contributing to your presenting problem. I often collaborate with primary care physicians and medical specialists to provide comprehensive interdisciplinary care for the mind and body.

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 could help for the problems you have. I will guide you through what the research shows 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)
• Maladaptive behaviors (including aggression, irritability, violence, self-harm) in those with autism spectrum disorder or have intellectual disability, including in those who are minimally 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

Click here to request a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation.

Adults – 90 minutes

Children/Teenagers/Transitional Age Adults
• Traditional: one 120-minute appointment
• Comprehensive: two 90-minute appointments (total 180 minutes)

Evaluations must be fully paid in advance to schedule a booking. This is 100% refundable if canceled within the 48 hours of the scheduled appointment.

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.

For children, adolescents, and transitional age adults up to age 26 years old, we will have two intake appointments separated by at least one week. For the first appointment, I will meet with the parents for the first 60 minutes of the first appointment, then with the patient for the last 30 minutes. Between these two appointments, I may gather information from the school, from the therapist, and from other people who may lend insight into the child’s symptoms. During the second appointment, I will meet with the child for the first 45-60 minutes and then we will discuss the assessment and treatment plan at the end of the second appointment.

Alternatively, you may choose to schedule one 120 minute (two hour) session where both the parents and child, teenager, or transitional age adult are present. At the end of this session, we will discuss the assessment and treatment recommendations.

No treatment relationship will necessarily emerge from this initial 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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Brief Pharmacotherapy 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 goal of talk therapy is for the therapist to try to help people gain better mental health. 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 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)
• Family Therapy (Emotionally Focused Therapy)

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Late Cancellations or Missed Appointments

Late cancellations or missed appointments are billed at the full fee based on the scheduled appointment time. Please cancel at least 2 business days ahead of time.

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Prescriptions

It is my policy to write prescriptions and refills when you come for a scheduled appointment. In emergency cases, I may authorize some medication prior to your next 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.