Psychiatrist

We do have a psychiatrist on our son’s team. Originally we used their office to do the latest round of testing, we really needed to figure out if he had a mood disorder problem or if it was something else masquerading as that.

Meeting with a psychiatrist had never really been on our ‘to do’ list but we got a referral from our counselor who thought it would be a good idea to A: Rule things out, and B: Advise on medication or other therapies to get him through his rough patches.  Luckily the referral was to someone who is smart, enlightened and well read.

Our sessions have lots of give and take which I feel is very important, I have come too far and learnt so much on this journey that I really take issue when a practitioner talks down to me, or worse refers constantly to my husband during the consultation. My husband is knowledgeable and very involved with our children’s lives; however, I spend much more time with them, I am the stay home parent, although I am currently getting back into the workforce. I have intentionally chosen a profession so that I am able to work from home. Anyway, I am the person who finds practitioners and I am the one who researches and reads up on all the possible ways to help our family. My husband listens and plays devils advocate but overall he knows we need to keep moving ahead too, so he is usually on board with most of these things. There was one neurological psychologist who spent the entire hour addressing my husband, including looking directly at him while I responded. It was maddening! 🙂 So consequently this current psychiatrist works much better for all of us.

She brings 20 years of experience in her field to the table, including the latest medicinal treatment opportunities, which while this isn’t my first choice or my second, occasionally there is reason to use medication to help my son cope with his life.

I need her knowledge on many levels, and the fact that I can actually have a conversation with her about all this makes the visits very productive. We meet about once a month and it is $125 a session, not on our insurance. Again, they will supply an invoice with the necessary DSM code to have you self-file.

This office spent 5 weeks administering the various tests for my son. It took about an hour each time and each test was charged differently depending on the test.