COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TRAINED JOHNS HOPKINS TRAINED BOARD CERTIFIED PMHNP
GARDEN CITY OFFICE
Concierge Psychiatric Care
for High-Stakes Professionals
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TRAINED JOHNS HOPKINS TRAINED BOARD CERTIFIED PMHNP
GARDEN CITY OFFICE
Concierge Psychiatric Care
for High-Stakes Professionals
Conditions
Depression does not always look like sadness, and in accomplished people it often does not look like anything from the outside. The work still gets done. The obligations are still met. What goes quiet is everything underneath: interest, energy, the sense that any of it matters. Many people keep performing for a long time while privately running on empty, telling themselves it is just stress or a rough stretch.
The Lieberman Center treats depression and mood disorders as a private psychiatric practice built for demanding professionals. Care is delivered directly by Brad Lieberman, PMHNP-BC. The person who evaluates you is the person who treats you, with no intake coordinator and no rotating provider.
Depression frequently overlaps with anxiety and with burnout, and it can also be part of a broader mood pattern, which is why an accurate evaluation matters before deciding on a plan.
If you are ever in immediate crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or go to your nearest emergency room. A Schedule a Consultation is not the right route in an emergency.
The first task is an accurate picture. Low mood and low energy can come from depression, from thyroid or other medical contributors, from grief or a specific stressor, or can be one part of a wider mood pattern that changes the right approach entirely. Evaluation begins with a thorough clinical conversation about your history, how symptoms show up across your work and personal life, and what you want to change. The result is an honest assessment and a plan built around your circumstances, not a rushed conclusion.
Treatment is individualized and, by design, conservative. For many people, psychotherapy is central to lasting change, and it is often the foundation of the plan. Where it is appropriate, carefully monitored medication can be one part of treatment, and whether it has any role at all is decided together and reviewed over time. The goal is durable recovery and a return of the things depression quietly took, not a quick fix.
Many of the professionals the practice works with care about where their information goes. Because care is private-pay, no insurance claim is filed, so your diagnosis is not coded into a payer’s claims database or the data-broker networks that draw from it. Your care stays a direct relationship between you and your provider, not a data trail moving through third parties you never chose.
They overlap enough to be confused constantly, and the distinction matters because the treatments diverge. Burnout is tied to a context. It tends to lift, at least partially, when the demand is removed: a real holiday, a change of role, a project that finally ships. Depression travels with you. The holiday arrives and the flatness comes along too.
The other separator is interest. Burnout is usually exhaustion with the wanting still intact, and you would enjoy the thing if you had any energy left for it. In depression the wanting itself goes quiet, and activities that reliably gave pleasure stop registering at all. People often arrive describing burnout because it is the more acceptable word, and establishing which one is actually in the room is a large part of what the evaluation is for.
High-functioning depression gets missed because the output holds. Deadlines are met, the team is managed, and nobody at work suspects anything. The cost is paid privately, and it shows up in the parts of life that have no external deadline attached to them.
Because performance is preserved, these presentations often run for years before anyone names them.
Depression treatment is not a single appointment, and it is structured here so that nothing is left to drift.
How quickly things shift varies from person to person, and no honest clinician can promise you a timeline. What can be committed to is that the plan is reviewed on a schedule and adjusted on evidence.
Is it depression, or just stress and burnout?
They can feel similar and often overlap, but they are not the same, and they respond to different plans. Stress tends to ease when the pressure does; depression tends to persist and to flatten your interest and energy even when things should feel fine. A careful evaluation is the way to tell them apart rather than guessing.
Will I have to take medication?
Not necessarily. For many people, therapy does much of the work, and medication is considered only where it is clearly warranted. Whether it has any role at all is a decision made together and revisited over time. The approach here is deliberately conservative.
Is it still depression if I can do my job?
It can be. Functioning is not the threshold. Plenty of people meet criteria for depression while continuing to perform at a high level, and the effort that performance is costing them is part of the clinical picture rather than evidence against it.
How long before I know whether something is working?
It varies, and anyone offering a confident number is guessing. Antidepressant medication, where it is used, generally needs several weeks before its effect can be judged fairly. That is precisely why the plan is reviewed on a schedule rather than abandoned early or carried on indefinitely without reassessment.
I tried therapy before and it did not help. Is there any point?
That is worth examining rather than dismissing. Fit with the therapist, timing, the type of therapy, and whether an untreated sleep or medical contributor was in play all affect how a course goes. A previous attempt that did not work is information about that attempt, not a verdict on you.
Take the First Step
The first step is a brief fifteen-minute Schedule a Consultation to discuss what you are experiencing and confirm the practice is the right fit. There is no charge and no obligation. Most new patients are seen within roughly forty-eight hours of that first conversation.