I grew up in Northern California where I was the oldest of 4 siblings from a medical family. three of us are now physicians, and two of us are psychiatrists. I don't know what that says about our family! The fourth, my little sister is a journalist and author. I always wanted to be a psychiatrist because I started out in the humanities and I saw psychiatry as the humanistic part of medicine, the part that deals with the soul. I still think that is true, and embrace the opportunity to help people change psychological pain into opportunity for growth and change. And psychiatry as a medical field has grown to the point where our medications truly relieve very real suffering for our patients and their families.

I practice at the Regional offices, also known as Highline clinic. I see patients usually on 3 days of the week. I am the department chair and so I try to do my administrative work on the other two days. Inevitably the work blends together and the weeks are very interesting. I see adults and adolescents and although I work a lot with medications I believe that counseling and a real connection with my patients are essential even to the effectiveness of medication interventions.