Anita Barzman, MD

I have consulted frequently with Dr. Barzman. She is a highly accomplished, thoughtful and responsible psychiatrist who is very skilled at integrating psychotherapy and Jungian psychoanalysis with different medication modalities. Dr. Barzman is thorough and insightful in her diagnoses and recommendations for treatment. She offers perceptive ways of looking at issues that provide patients with new avenues to better understand themselves. Dr. Barzman is deeply respectful of all patients. She considers their right to confidentiality an imperative in treatment. She has impeccable boundaries and enormous integrity. She brings a rare creativity and compassion to her work. I cannot recommend Dr. Barzman highly enough.

this is awkward, because I’m not all comfortable revealing personal information, but if I can save just one person from a family crisis, it’ll be worth it.
This doctor crossed the line of Physician-​Patient Privilege (doctor-​patient confidentiality), rule number one, no-​no. One of the reasons I hired her is she seemed trustworthy. This is not the case. I won’t go into further personal details.
She is also a big fan of «homeopathic» drugs wich are complete pseudo-​science with no clinical trials nor any sensible scientific backing.
I saw her given a recommendation from another Jung Institute doctor who was not available. Never again. Quack alert.
She crossed the line of patient confidentiality and should lose her license.

I’ve hesitated for 4 years to write this review, primarily because I’m not all that comfortable revealing personal information, but if I can save some people from a profoundly negative experience, it’ll be worth it.
I saw Dr Barzman for 8 months in 2008. She was recommended as someone that takes a more holistic and less pharaceutical approach to managing mental health. After some months of therapy, she convinced me that my condition warranted some assistance with medication.
The first medication she put me on caused such immediate and extreme side effects that I ended up having to cancel a trip to visit family and instead basically spent a week making frantic trips to the bathroom (I won’t go into details). On my next visit to Dr Barzman, she was quite adamant that these symptoms were not caused by the medication.
Being a proactive person, I read up on the medication and sure enough, I was seeing the most common side effect. I brought this to her attention and she became agitated and basically just said «Well, none of my patients have ever had that problem and I’ve been prescribing it for years». It seemed very odd to me that a doctor would not understand that you can’t base things ONLY on your own direct experience with a medication. The sample size is just too small. Anyways.
This pattern repeated through other medications she tried on me, as I would continue to have bad side effects for each of them that outweighed any benefit. She’d once again denied that the medication could be at fault based on her own personal experience.
She put me on another medication which seemed to be working with no bad side effects. I happened to be visiting my GP and when she heard what I was taking and at what dose, she was flabbergasted. She told me the dosage was extremely high and that the drug I was taking was highly addictive, with serious withdrawal problems when I needed to come off of it. I did my own research, which all confirmed what my GP said.
When I brought this up to Dr Barzman, she became unhinged and angry and basically yelled at me. She insisted the dosage was not high and the drug was not addictive (which contradicted even what the manufacturer says in their own literature). She was very upset that I had consulted someone else and demanded to know the credentials of my GP. She rattled off her own credentials and was quite upset that I would value the opinion of someone that did not have the same degrees on their wall as she did. «How dare you undermine my authority!» came out of her mouth at one point (direct quote).
Looking back on previous sessions, I recalled other instances when she would get mildly annoyed or agitated if I questioned anything she advised me to do.
Needless to say, this was the end of my sessions with Dr Barzman and I was left to spend the next 6 months getting off the «temporary» medication that she had me taking. The dosage she was giving me was basically the largest possible dose that anyone ever takes and is typically for people that need to be committed.
Perhaps she does help some patients, but I guess you have to be very passive and not take an active role in healing yourself to get along with Dr Barzman. To get angry and yell at someone for doing their own research and passing along information from the GP is unprofessional and detrimental to people that you are supposed to be helping.
The short version is that I’d avoid Dr Barzman at all costs. There are plenty of kind, compassionate doctors and therapists and psychiatrists out there to choose from. At this risk of crossing the line, I’d suggest that Dr Barzman has her own very serious issues that she needs to work out before she should be seeing other patients.