About Dr Samelson
I am a psychiatrist practicing in-depth psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis, with or without medications. I currently see patients in Illinois, California, and Washington state. I am only available for telehealth (visits by video), but aim to be available for in-person visits in Chicago in the coming year.
Insight-Oriented Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy works by building together a safe relational environment so that you can investigate the way your life experiences have led to certain ways of being in regards to yourself, relationships, and our sociocultural environment. Therapy can help you recognize these patterns so you can move towards a greater understanding of how you do, can, and want to interface with a complex and imperfect world. A therapy story often involves grace for yourself, validation and integration of the hard feelings and memories that your early contexts created, and agency going forward in order to live life in accordance with your desires, values, and sense of an authentic self. I aim for this process to be collaborative, curious, deep, and evolving. It benefits from a striving towards understanding and openness from both of us.
As a therapist, I am especially interested in helping with the aftermath of trauma on an individual, interpersonal, and greater sociocultural level, including experiences of racialized trauma, gender-based violence, abusive dynamics, and queer- and transphobia. My practice and theoretical background are informed by my political groundings in queer theory, prison and police abolition, transformative justice, and liberatory harm reduction frameworks.
Psychoanalytic Treatment
Traditionally psychoanalysis is understood as a long-term and intensive psychotherapy experience focused on the unconscious. Psychoanalysis as a theoretical and cultural community and practice contains many contradictory threads, and has since its inception. My interest lies in a psychoanalytic practice and theoretical foundation which values and uplifts cultural and psychologic underworlds, and endeavors to experience and access these underworlds via the particular relationship available through a psychoanalytic frame. With this in mind, my psychoanalytic practice is grounded by and run-through with decolonial and queer theorizing, and aims towards liberation.
Specialized Psychiatric Treatment
Our minds are a complex interrelation between our brain, other somatic systems, our social context, and much else about our environment. Improving mental health calls for a creative and adaptive approach that takes all these factors into account, and which can apply various frameworks according to their validity and utility, rather than taking them for granted. The disease model of mental distress, taken for granted in mainstream psychiatry, has pros and cons, and its potential to cause harm is sometimes underestimated. I have found that a more flexible approach can help us understand, deeply and pragmatically, what really helps. An effective treatment approach for you might include starting or stopping medications, long-term insight-oriented therapy (see above), brief therapeutic techniques from various modalities, relationships or community involvement, over the counter supplements, behavioral activation and movement, and more.
Psychiatric Consultation
Outpatient consultations typically consist of 2-3 visits focused on in-depth evaluation, brief therapeutic engagement, and thorough recommendations to bring you forward after our encounters with a full mental health toolbox. During our work we will talk in depth about your mental health history and current experience to create a plan together to help you best. Because we’ll meet a few times, you’ll have some time to trial recommendations so we can cater them to you and your needs. At the conclusion of our consultation I provide written recommendations which I can communicate to your primary care doctor for ongoing treatment. Consultations are often helpful for people looking for second opinions, new ideas to try, or a first professional look at their mental health. A consultation would not be appropriate if you need an ongoing doctor-patient relationship with me. At this time I am not available for consultations for ADHD assessment or for anyone under 18.
Education
I am certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Illinois Institute of Technology, B.S.
University of Illinois at Chicago, M.D.
University of Washington, Psychiatry Residency
PAYMENT
I am considered an out-of-network provider with all insurance companies. I can provide itemized receipts that are submitted to an insurance company for reimbursement, often called a “superbill”. I recommend checking with your insurance provider to learn what proportion of my fee might be reimbursed. I often have some sliding scale fee options available, which are prioritized for those experiencing financial instability and/or those who have been marginalized in our society by racism, lack of disability access, homophobia, transphobia, or other forms of structural inequity.
Contact Me
If you’d like to discuss beginning treatment or scheduling consultation with me, please call and leave a voicemail at (206) 558-5495. When you call, include your name, phone number, and some good times for me to call you back. We can talk over the phone about some logistics and basic ideas of what work together might look like, and if it feels like a good fit, we can then schedule a visit. Alternatively, please use the contact form below to let me know how to get in touch with you.
Please note, the information in below form goes to my unencrypted email account. I apply reasonable safeguards to protect health information sent electronically, but I cannot guarantee the security and confidentiality of email communication. I will not be responsible for messages that are not received or delivered due to technical failure, or for disclosure of confidential information unless caused by intentional misconduct.
Please be aware that I cannot respond to requests urgently. If you need urgent assistance, please call the Crisis Line at 988 or go to the nearest emergency room.