Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

For children ages 5 through 12 with serious psychiatric disorders, we offer 24-hour inpatient services in our 10-bed, locked unit. Children receive a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation, medications and other appropriate therapeutic interventions, which may include behavior management programs and therapeutic recreation along with educational services through the BOCES program.

A core component of treatment is parent training to reinforce inpatient treatment, better manage the child, and give parents a new set of coping skills. 
The inpatient team includes a psychiatrist (Samuel Gartner, MD, Medical Director), psychologist (Darla Broberg, PhD), social worker (Angela Denton, LCSW), registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and nursing assistants.

Unique to Long Island, the Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) program provides school services while the child is hospitalized. BOCES teachers help students maintain and develop their educational potential during hospitalization, create a routine and develop new coping skills. The program is available to both regular and special education students. The BOCES team works closely with the school to assess the child's performance and ease the transition back to school.

Our mission is to provide the most up-to-date, evidence-based clinical care to children and adolescents who are suffering from psychiatric illness. Through an understanding of the multiple biological, psychological and social factors related to a child's problems, we deliver comprehensive psychiatric evaluations and innovative treatment plans to help alleviate their symptoms.  

We offer pharmacologic evaluation and ongoing medication management, as well as individual therapy, based on the needs of our patients and their families. We are also dedicated to developing additional therapeutic services for patients and families, including group therapy and parent management training. We strive to work in collaboration with families to best understand the problems they face and to utilize their inherent strengths to improve their lives.

Our experienced child and adolescent psychiatry faculty (Wilfred Farquharson IV, PhD, Director) are nationally renowned and have expertise in a wide range of disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, mood and anxiety disorders, learning disorders and behavioral disorders.

We are expanding our outpatient services for children and teens with autism spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities. Led by Dr. Judith Crowell, we will have coordinated psychiatry, psychology, social work, and school consultation services for children with these problems.

A routine evaluation begins with obtaining standardized ratings from parent and teacher, copies of past evaluations and hospital records if relevant, and an interview with the parent/caretaker and child.

Our consultation services provide high-quality, thorough and timely psychiatric consultations to pediatric patients throughout Stony Brook Children's Hospital.

Led by Dr. Judith Crowell, these services provide assistance with the evaluation and management of psychological conditions and psychiatric disorders occurring in medically ill children throughout the hospital. These include complex medical/psychiatric diagnoses, stress reactions to medical conditions, self-injurious behaviors or suicidal attempts and ideation, acute decompensation from prior psychiatric or psychological status, procedural anxiety, depression and chronic pain.

Assessment consists of talking to the families and children about medical and psychological/psychiatric conditions and collaborating with the pediatric team involved in their care.

Dr. Deborah Weisbrot is embedded in three Western Suffolk BOCES schools that serve students from kindergarten through high school with serious psychiatric conditions. This program provides a unique consultation and liaison service between school staff and community services for these children with chronic problems.

In addition, the school program provides in-depth evaluations in the outpatient clinic through the BOCES system. These assessments, which are sometimes needed for legal matters, typically provide second opinions for school districts that seek detailed reports to help the child obtain appropriate school services. And as always, these evaluations and assessments help educate parents, guardians and the child on the presence, nature and treatment of their condition.

Our division maintains an accredited two-year psychiatric fellowship with two fellows each year. Our faculty also teaches residents and medical students from the Stony Brook School of Medicine.

We have been active in research efforts for many years. For example, Dr. Gabrielle Carlson is an internationally recognized researcher in bipolar disorder. She has also been involved in several longitudinal studies based at Stony Brook University.

Two projects with Dr. Evelyn Bromet are follow-up studies of late teens and adults who had a first episode of psychosis and of children and families exposed to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She is also a collaborator with Daniel Klein, PhD, in the Department of Psychology, following a community sample of preschool children to examine the effects of temperament in predicting future depressive disorder.

Dr. Judith Crowell is the principal investigator of a longitudinal study that investigates the role of family factors, and acute and chronic trauma and stress on the development of metabolic syndrome (precursors to adult-onset diabetes and heart disease). She has studied attachment relationships, both parent-child and adult partnerships, and is interested in the role of close relationships as buffers against trauma and the development of subsequent health problems.

Dr. Deborah Weisbrot has been involved with the Lourie Center for Pediatric MS as their psychiatric consultant. In addition to in-depth clinical evaluations, there are ongoing studies of psychiatric aspects of pediatric multiple sclerosis. As an outgrowth of this research, Dr. Weisbrot has published one of the first papers describing psychiatric aspects of demyelinating disorders in children and adolescents. She is a long-standing member of the Physically Ill Child Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and co-editor of a book titled Neurologic Differential Diagnosis: A Case-Based Approach (2014).