Medications and Psychotherapy
Our board-certified professionals are well-trained to diagnose and provide individualized care to each of our clients. We treat the full spectrum of psychiatric disorders. All of our practitioners are trained in psychopharmacology and psychotherapy. Currently, we offer medication management to each of our patients. All treatment by the PA and NPs is supervised by Dr. Amita Jha MD MPH.
We understand that not everyone can tolerate psychiatric medications and like all other medicines they do have side effects. We do our best to refer for alternative treatments as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), or, various forms of talk therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), psychodynamic therapy, couples therapy, relational therapies that can help in alleviating the symptoms.
First appointment
Your first appointment will be with any of our providers with openings available. it is usually a 60 minutes appointment with complete intake of your present and past history and medications. At the end of the meeting provider will discuss a tentative diagnosis and a treatment plan with your full participation. Depending on the complexity of the situation or illness, it may take a 2-3 meetings to finalize a diagnosis, medication and psychotherapy and follow up plan.
Follow up appointment
Our follow up appointments are 20-30 minutes and 45-50 minutes depending on the complexity of the case. Your provider will discuss the frequency and length of the follow up visits.
It is customary in our practice that we follow most patients every two weeks for first few week, followed by monthly appointments and then as patients stabilize we transition them to appointments once every 3 months. This is to afford closer monitoring of the medications and side effects initially.
Referrals
Your provider will also discuss any need for psychotherapy and we try our best to find referrals either within our practice or to outside therapists. We also at times will refer you to PCPs, endocrinologists, neurologists, pain management, and sleep medicine if necessary for the treatment.
prescriptions
Prescription management is an important task best accomplished through close collaboration between the provider and patients. Please note the following facts:
Sending prescriptions out to your pharmacies digitally takes time and effort, and we usually need 48 hours to refill prescriptions. It is best practice to get your prescriptions refilled by the provider during your appointments.
Controlled substance prescriptions such as adderall, xanax, cannot be refilled without appointments. Please discuss this with your provider.
Some of the prescriptions need pre- authorization from insurance companies and it takes an average of 4-5 days to complete that process.
It is our policy that all patients must be seen at the very least every 3 months for any psychiatric drug prescriptions. Please discuss with your provider if you need any alternate arrangements.