How I Came to Psychiatry
My interest in psychiatry began long before my formal medical training. From 1985 through 1990, I spent six consecutive summers working in recreational wilderness programs for children and adolescents with significant emotional and behavioral difficulties.
I began as a counselor working with younger children, later leading wilderness trips with adolescents, and eventually taking on a supervisory role. Although these were recreational rather than clinical programs, working closely with these young people was an enormously rewarding experience.
I had already intended to pursue a career in medicine, but those summers helped determine the direction I would take. I discovered that I had both a particular interest in and a natural temperament for working with children and adolescents facing considerable challenges. The program's clinical director, a psychologist, encouraged me to consider psychiatry.
It seemed a natural evolution of my interests, and ultimately helped shape my medical training and professional life.
My Approach to Psychiatry
One of the most important aspects of my work is listening carefully to patients and taking their experiences seriously.
I have found that it is particularly important to recognize and accept each patient's individual experience of their illness and its treatment as valid and meaningful. That experience provides an essential starting point for deciding, together, how best to proceed.
After many years in practice, I remain struck by just how different patients are from one another. Two people with the same diagnosis may experience their symptoms quite differently, respond very differently to the same medication, or have entirely different priorities when it comes to treatment.
Psychiatric diagnosis and treatment should be informed by scientific evidence, but they must also be guided by the experience of the individual patient. I see these not as competing approaches, but as essential parts of good medical care.
This requires careful listening, thoughtful diagnosis, and a willingness to reconsider our assumptions when the clinical picture doesn't fit what we expected.
Medical Training and Professional Experience
Following my medical internship in North Carolina, I completed my psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and fellowship training in child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Children's Hospital.
My professional career has taken me through a variety of clinical settings, including inpatient psychiatry, psychiatric hospitals, academic medicine, community mental health, and private practice.
My first position was in Portland, Maine, where I directed an adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit for approximately two years. I subsequently worked at a psychiatric hospital in Storrs, Connecticut, before joining the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. I later entered private practice with Grayson & Associates, a large psychiatric group in Birmingham.
I returned to New England in 2009, becoming Medical Director of the Island Counseling Center at Martha's Vineyard Community Services, a position I held until approximately 2015. In 2014, I also became Medical Director of Fairwinds Counseling Center on Nantucket, a position I continue to hold.
In 2012, I established my private practice in the Boston area, where I provide psychiatric evaluation and psychopharmacologic treatment for children, adolescents, and adults.
These varied experiences have shaped my approach to psychiatry and reinforced the importance of careful diagnosis, individualized treatment, and understanding patients within the broader context of their lives.
Outside of Medicine
Outside of my professional life, I enjoy sailing, playing the piano, skiing, traveling, and spending time with family and friends. These interests have been an important part of my life and provide a welcome balance to my work in medicine.