About Me
That frustration led me to functional medicine. When I came across the work of the Institute for Functional Medicine, their approach made immediate sense to me. It aligned with everything I already believed about how people heal: you have to treat the whole person, find the root cause, and not just manage the symptom. I completed their training and became a certified practitioner. It changed the way I practice.
I think about mental health the same way I thought about those calls on the police department. You do not assume you already know the answer. You investigate. You keep pulling on threads until you find what is actually driving the problem. And you do not give up on a person just because the first approach did not work.
Outside of work, I am most myself when I am traveling off the beaten path, to places most people have never heard of, reading from the Great Books of the Western World, or getting in a run or a HIIT workout before the day starts. My wife and I are raising three daughters in Wisconsin, where waking up to fresh air and open space still feels like a gift. My Catholic faith is a steady thread in my life. It shapes how I see and treat people, how I think about suffering, and what I believe is possible for the people I work with.
I did not grow up expecting to become a psychiatrist. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family where nobody worked in medicine before. My first career was as a Chicago Police Officer.
That job shaped me in ways that medical school never could have. Night after night, my partner and I were transporting people in mental health crises to the hospital. People living with untreated schizophrenia, severe depression, conditions that had gone unaddressed for years, sometimes decades. I would drop them off at the emergency room and find myself wondering: what actually happens to them after this? I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I already knew the answer. And it bothered me.
That restlessness is what eventually led me to medicine. I did not take a straight road to get there. I attended St. James School of Medicine, a Caribbean medical school, as a non-traditional student - medicine was my second career, and I came to it older and from a different academic background than most of my peers. I figured out quickly that nobody was going to carry me through it. You had to be resourceful, problem-solve constantly, and connect with people fast. Looking back, those were exactly the skills that would make me a better doctor.
What I discovered in medical school, and what continues to drive me today, is that psychiatry is the most human branch of medicine. Surgery is precise. You fix a structure, move on to the next patient, and the work speaks for itself. Psychiatry is something else entirely. It is investigative. You are trying to understand why a person thinks, feels, and experiences the world the way they do, and then figure out which levers to pull to help them feel better. Not just one lever. Usually several, working together. That challenge has never gotten old.
I completed my general psychiatry residency at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, where I was named Chief Resident. I then completed a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital, where I served as Co-Chief Fellow. I received additional training in psychodynamic psychotherapy at the Florida Psychoanalytic Institute, and completed a Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Throughout my training and early years in practice, I kept running into the same problem. Patients were not getting better. Not because they were not trying, but because the system was not giving them enough. Twenty-minute appointments. Limited treatment options. Prescriptions written without enough time to understand the whole picture. I watched people cycle through medications without a clear long-term plan, and I felt the frustration of knowing that more could be done.
Patients often tell me I am not what they expected from a psychiatrist. I will take that as a compliment.
If you have spent time in mental health care feeling rushed, unheard, or like you were being handed a prescription instead of a plan, I would like the chance to do something different with you.
Doctor of Medicine, St. James School of Medicine
General Psychiatry Residency, University of Tennessee Health Science Center; Chief Resident
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship, University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital; Co-Chief Fellow
Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship, Medical University of South Carolina
2 year Certification program in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Florida Psychoanalytic Institute
Certified Practitioner (FMCP-M), Institute for Functional Medicine
Board Certified in Adult Psychiatry
Board Certified in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Board Certified in Forensic Psychiatry