Psychiatric Assessments, Medication Management, and Psychotherapy as Brief Therapeutic Interventions

You will receive a welcome packet with forms about reason for seeking care, current medications, medical history, and previous psychiatric history. You will be given access to our secure online portal to complete these forms. You will also receive several other forms including our disclosure, privacy, and financial agreement forms to sign. If you do not have Internet access, please contact us so we can make arrangements for completing these forms. Your appointment will be cancelled if these forms are not completed. 

Our first visit will be in person or virtual and generally lasts about 50-55 minutes. We will go over your current symptoms, current medications, medical history, past psychiatric history, past psychiatric medications, social history, and family psychiatric history. Depending on your symptoms, laboratory testing may be ordered to rule out any medical causes for presenting symptoms. The focus of this visit is to learn more about you in order to evaluate and assess your symptoms. New medication may or may not be ordered on the initial visit as we want to make sure a thorough assessment is completed before prescribing new medication and this may take more than one visit.

Our second appointment may be in person or virtual and generally lasts about 40-50 minutes. The focus of this visit is to clarify questions from our first visit and review treatment options. We will discuss your preferences and go over medication options if this is your preference. We will work together to come up with a treatment plan. 

Follow up visits can be 25 to 50 minutes based on your personal preference. Longer appointments will include more talk therapy as well as medication management. The frequency of follow-up visits varies depending on your symptoms, response to medication, and desire for talk therapy. Your provider will work with you to decide what may be best for you. In general, when medication changes are made, follow up visits will need to be more often. Follow up visits may include: medication management, brief therapeutic interventions, health education, health coaching, or a combination of these.