J. Gerald Young, M.D.

Many problems are encountered in the lives of individuals and families. Sometimes these problems are very common, such as marital problems or workplace difficulties, or when they take the form of familiar clinical disorders, such as depression, anxiety, or behavior disorders like ADHD, ADD, or Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Other problems or clinical disorders are not so common, but are just as distressing.

Problems lead to requests for help; this help is designated as “treatment” or “therapy” in medicine, and it is important to think about what treatment means when used in relation to the complex functions of the mind and brain. Therapy, or psychotherapy, or treatment, is conventionally described in the singular, yet the reality is that there are many therapies responsive to the many functions of the mind – or, as I would prefer to think of it, there are many different potential components of the therapy for an individual, depending on the individual’s particular needs at any time. A child being helped by behavior modification therapy might later benefit from individual insight-oriented psychotherapy. An adult might respond well to both medication and couples therapy during treatment, later extended by a change to individual psychodynamic psychotherapy.

The following are examples of “component therapies”:

Individual psychotherapy, behavior management, parent counseling, couples therapy, marriage counseling, family therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, medication, group therapy, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, play therapy for children, child analysis, etc.

Goals

You come for help because you are struggling with problems of some kind, and it is my goal to use all possible means available to me as a psychiatrist to help you find enduring relief from these problems.

The human condition includes more suffering than we would expect or wish. We now understand that a significant portion of suffering is due to the fact that it is inevitable that each of us has not learned all of the concepts and skills that would help us to adapt better and suffer less.

Therefore, at the beginning of treatment we will determine specific, concrete, practical goals that you decide are most important to you. We shall then discuss how I structure the goals, and our pursuit of the goals, in a manner that will be most beneficial for you.

Over time, we shall work to learn about new elements of problems of which we were initially unaware, elements that contribute significantly to your problems. In order to enable you to learn solutions to these problems, in the form of new adaptive behaviors (skills), it often requires setting new goals related to your initial practical goals. These goals assure that we recognize when you have learned the necessary skills to overcome a problem.

Why is it so critical to set goals? The fluid and varied activities of one’s life, and one’s continuous and diverse communications with others, can generate a significant problem: many reasonable goals can emerge in the course of therapy, and shifting attention to varied goals creates a risk that attention to these multiple goals will undermine the likelihood of achieving the goals initially discussed (the “principal goals”). Moreover, a focus on too many goals simultaneously can have a similarly disruptive influence on the likelihood of successfully reaching any goals. Therefore, specific principal goals will be established at the beginning of treatment, and changes or replacements for these goals will only occur by careful mutual consideration and agreement. However, other goals can be established if recognized as “sub-goals” required as part of achieving a main goal.

Flexibility of goals is respected and maintained, but tracking the principal goals, throughout the course of therapy, assures that additions to or changes in goals are carefully considered and the result of mutual agreement.

Educational seminars are available independent of treatment, as an opportunity to enlarge one’s understanding of human behavior. They consist of a series of meetings of a group with three to six members discussing a selected topic in the context of a media-rich presentation. Each group is formed by the initiating efforts of one or more group members; when someone is interested in attending such a group, he or she can talk to friends about forming the group. The sessions are offered for groups at fees that are lower for individual members of the group than the usual fee for individual therapy.

Educational seminars are organized according to topic (e.g., attention, anger and aggression, love, etc. – see “Topics” below). They also can be focused on a particular media format, such as, for example, understanding culture through films, learning about love through reading novels, understanding moral courage by reading biographies or Greek tragedies, or examining culture and values through reading myths.

Educational seminars are also available at the beginning of therapy or at any point during the course of treatment. Educational sessions prior to or during therapy with individuals or couples are billed at their usual fee.

Education does not replace therapy; instead, it complements therapy. Knowledge is insufficient for a satisfying relationship and life; knowledge must be incorporated into routine habitual behavior in a useful manner, and integrated with self-awareness and other-awareness. Yet, like any other profession, psychiatry has a set of concepts, and an associated vocabulary (including, inevitably, a sometimes misunderstood jargon), that those outside the profession are unfamiliar with. This problem is amplified by the growing contribution of concepts and vocabulary from related disciplines, such as neuroscience or genetics.

Therefore, a brief review of basic concepts and related vocabulary before beginning therapy will enrich the therapy by preventing misunderstandings and sharpening observations and mutual goals with the therapist. This is an obvious benefit when undertaken at the outset of treatment, but is also beneficial periodically during the course of treatment, illuminating and clarifying concepts and meanings as progress necessarily introduces new perspectives.


Media

Media comes in many forms, and can have immense practical use during the course of treatment. This is especially true when used as an element available for educational sessions, making them lively, emotionally evocative and relevant, and neutrally available for reference in discussions with others. Media can include novels, film clips, video clips, magazine or newspaper articles, music, myths, photos, visual art, history, biographies, comedy, etc., or the integration of several forms of media in a Broadway musical, ballet, movie, or opera.


Science

Many sciences contribute significant, relevant information to the concepts that enable us to understand human behavior and the behavioral interactions among us. Commentaries concerning the related topics from these disciplines not only refresh and extend our understanding of behavior, but also our understanding of vocabulary and concepts that increasingly appear in popular media. Examples are neuroscience, neurochemistry, information theory, evolutionary psychology, neuroendocrinology, linguistics, genetics, psychopharmacology, etc.

If you would like to schedule an appointment, please call my office. You will speak to my office manager, Ms. Mariela Gonzalez. She will either schedule an appointment for you or schedule a time for a phone call when you and I can speak about the possibility of beginning treatment. If for any reason you would prefer to begin by sending me an email, this is also fine.

The process for initiating an educational seminar is the same: ask Ms. Gonzalez to schedule a time for a phone call when I can discuss your idea for an educational seminar with you.

Treatment begins with one or two longer (two hour) appointments, enabling

* you to describe your reasons for seeking help,

* me to begin to obtain the medical and personal information necessary for a broad understanding of the significant elements of your life, and fulfilling the medical requirements for an evaluation

* the two of us to begin to know and understand one another.

J. Gerald Young, M.D., is Research Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. He is the founder of The Media Sciences Group. He is past Editor-in-Chief of the Book Series of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions and was a member of the Executive Committee of that organization for eighteen years.

Dr. Young received a B.A. in English literature from the University of Notre Dame, and his M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School, where he also completed an internship in internal medicine. His residency training, in psychiatry and also in child and adolescent psychiatry, was at St. Luke’s Hospital Center, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, in New York City. He completed a fellowship in child psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center. He served as a lieutenant commander at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda Maryland for two years, while he was also on the faculty of the Georgetown University School of Medicine.

In the past, Dr. Young was Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and founder and Director of the Laboratory of Developmental Neurochemistry at the Yale University School of Medicine and Child Study Center, where he was a Berger Research Fellow and a W. T. Grant Foundation Research Scholar. He was Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Hospital in New York City, where he was also Director of the Laboratory of Developmental Neurochemistry. Dr. Young was Director of the Developmental Neurobiology Program and Associate Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. He is a practicing psychoanalyst and child analyst.

He is a past Chairman of the Psychopathology and Clinical Biology Research Review Committee of the National Institute of Mental Health, and past Chairman of the Committee on Research of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, where he was also a member of the Program Committee and is a Distinguished Life Fellow. Dr. Young founded the Research Forum for that organization, and was a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in psychiatry, as well as in child and adolescent psychiatry. He is a member of many scientific organizations.

Phone: 212-472-1862

Email: jgy@nyc.rr.com

Address: 16 1/2 East 74th Street, New York, NY 10021