Community Psychiatry Associates

Community Psychiatry Associates is a private practice group of child, adolescent and adult psychiatrists with offices throughout the Bay Area. Our group of psychiatrists was formed to help solve access problems for psychiatric services in local Bay area communities. In many areas in California, patients and their physicians were having great difficulty finding psychiatrists to provide psychiatric care. The major obstacle was finding psychiatrists who would accept insurance. Often the difficulties in locating psychiatrists and the approval process for care have been so daunting that both patients and their physicians have abandoned the possibility of getting help.

Our mission is simple: fast easy access. Our commitment is that with one phone call all patients will be promptly provided with an appointment to see a psychiatrist. We provide this service free of charge to any patient with commercial insurance. If our group does not directly contract with your insurance company, we will work with you and your insurer to be certain that you get care with a psychiatrist even if the provider is not in our group. Our group contracts directly with 90% of the managed care companies in the Bay Area. We also understand the complexities of obtaining authorization for your care from insurance companies and we make sure that you get the care you need in a timely manner.

Initial evaluations involve one or two hour-long sessions whose purpose is to obtain a detailed history for an accurate assessment of your problem. Following the evaluation your physician will make recommendations regarding medication and psychotherapy.

Often psychotherapy is a helpful adjunct to medication. While the primary focus of our practice is medication management, we will also work closely with your psychotherapist to coordinate your care. We can also help you find a psychotherapist.

If medication is needed, our staff will schedule follow-up sessions, which usually occur every one to two weeks during the initial phase of treatment. In these sessions, your physician will need to carefully monitor the response to medication and assess any side-effects which sometimes occur.

These follow-up sessions typically last 20 minutes; although they may take somewhat longer in the early stages of therapy while you and your physician are choosing the medication which is most helpful to you.

The most challenging aspect of using and managing psychiatric medications is that there are currently no blood tests, which can be reliably used either to diagnose a psychiatric difficulty or to decide which medication to choose. Your discussions with your physician and their clinical observations about you become the basis for choosing medication. For this reason, the initial stages of treatment may require several trials of different medications in order to choose a medication, which causes little or no side-effects and is effective. Finally, many of these medications can cause harmless but annoying side-effects (dry-mouth, constipation, stomach upset, diarrhea or mild headache), which often subside after several weeks.

For this reason, you will most likely meet more frequently with your doctor in the beginning of treatment. On-going sessions to monitor your progress are usually once per month after you are successfully responding to medication without side-effects.

Finally, in order to insure that all patients receive the time and attention, which they deserve, we do not double book appointments. We reserve your appointment time specifically for you and you alone. For this reason, our office charges for cancellations without 48 hours notice. While we understand that occasional emergencies will prevent timely cancellations, we respectfully ask that you give your appointments special priority.