ABOUT US
Dr. Deborah Simkin
Dr. Simkin, M.D. is a board certified Child, Adolescent and Adult Psychiatrist who practices Integrative Psychiatry and Sport Psychiatry. Dr. Simkin is a certified Distinquished Fellow with the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) and a Diplomate with the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine. She is alo board certified in neurofeedback by the Biofeedback International Certification Alliance. She is co-chair of the AACAP's Committee on Integrative Medicine.
After a thorough evaluation, she utilizes many complementary and integrative interventions which include, but are not limited to, such things as, genetic testing, cognitive behavior therapy, nutritional and herbal interventions, meditation, and LORETA neurofeedback.
ADHD/ADD
Learning Disorders
Depression
Anxiety Disorders
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Traumatic Brain Injury
Autism
LORETA neurofeedback differs from traditional neurofeedback because it can reach deeper structures. It can also determine how to target specific areas of the brain by comparing the patient's brain waves to a normal data base (quantitative EEG). Then these abnormal brain waves, which are associated with the patient’s symptoms, can be targeted during the neurofeedback training. Ideally, quantitative EEG allows the neurofeedback to occur in fewer sessions and allows an additional added benefit of improving connections between neurons (coherence) than traditional neurofeedback.
Dr. Simkin trained at Harvard’s McLean and Mass General Hospitals in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Following her residency she served as chair/co-chair of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s (AACAP) Committee on Substance Abuse. In that position she set up a liaison between AACAP and the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institute of Health (NIH) to increase research among child and adolescent psychiatrists. She also set up a liaison between the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine or NCCAM (soon to be re-named the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine or NCCIM) at NIH and AACAP to increase interest in research.
Dr. Simkin has served as Assistant Professor while at Dartmouth Medical School, Clinical Assistant Professor while teaching residents at LSU School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, Adjunct Associate Professor while at the University of South Alabama (USA) and is presently Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Emory Medical School. While at USA she served as residency director and became a member of the Society of Professor’s in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She presently teaches Complementary and Integrative Medicine in Psychiatric Disorders at the University of Emory. She has won many teaching awards while at LSU and USA.
She has authored many chapters, including chapters with Joel Lubar, PhD, Professor Emeritus at the University of Kentucky (who is the pioneer of neurofeedback for use with ADHD in the United States) and Robert Thatcher, PhD (who was the project manager at NIH when the correlations between quantitative EEG was done with neuoimaging, such as, PET scans. She also served as Co-Editor of the Adolescent Section in the American Society of Addiction Medicine’s Textbook on Addiction Medicine and seved as Co-Editor for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America's two volume textbook on Alternative and Complementary Therapies for Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Disorders. Her co-editor for the latter was her former mentor at Harvard, Charles Popper, M.D. Dr Lubar and Dr. Simkin still work together on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
The services offered under the Attention, Memory and Cognition Center involve many aspects of Integrative Psychiatry working with a team of professional throughout the community.
POST GRADUATE EDUCATION:
McLean Hospital, Harvard Affiliate, Belmont, Mass.
Child Psychiatry Residency
1991-93
Ochsner Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana
Adult Psychiatry Residency
1988-91
Internal Medicine Internship (Ochsner)
1987-88
MEDICAL
EDUCATION:
Louisiana State University Medical School
New Orleans, Louisiana
1983-87
GRADUATE
EDUCATION:
Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana
Educational Grant to study Medical Genetics and Ethics
Summer, 1980
University of New York, New York City, NY
Dance Training to fulfill requirement for speech
Minor to become Dance Department Head at High
School of Performing Arts in New Orleans
Summer, 1974
Louisiana State University, New Orleans, LA
B.S. Biology Education
1969-73
BOARD CERTIFICATION:
American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine, October, 2014
Board Certified Adult Psychiatrist
American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, 1992-present
Board Certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, 1994-present
Board Certified Addiction Medicine
American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, 1998-2008