Girish Subramanyan, MD

My experience with Dr. Subramanyan as a medical doctor has been positive. He seems very up-​to-​date and knowledgeable about medication for anxiety and insomnia, and he has been very helpful to me in this regard.
On the other hand, my experience in seeing Dr. Subramanyan for «talk therapy» was something of a mixed bag. I think he was trying to do his best and he proffered interesting insights now and then. But the most salient impression that I came away with after seeing him regularly for more than a year was feeling judged, misunderstood, and not taken seriously.
I would thus probably not recommend Dr. Subramanyan to friends and acquaintances for counseling, but would not hesitate to recommend him for medication consultation.

I’m a psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco (Julie Minoff, LCSW). Sometimes I need to coordinate with patients’ psychiatrists and occasionally I need to refer patients to be evaluated for medication. The first time I shared a patient with Dr Subramanyan was pure luck. A patient was seeing him. Since then I have been fortunate enough to share patients with Dr Subramanyan several times. He is caring and thorough and really considers the individual in front of him. He is also willing to coordinate with me if our patient allows and is more diligent about this than many psychiatrists. Behind his back, patients and I call him Dr Superman.

Dr. Subramanyan is in my estimation the crème de la crème of clinical psychiatrists.
As a clinician he is kind, nonjudgmental, and humble. As a patient, I consistently feel heard and understood by him, and he just «gets it» generally. Also, I’ve never had to wait more than a few hours to hear back from him either by email or telephone; additionally, speaking of email Dr. Subramanyan makes clear that he is happy to communicate by email any time I have general questions or something I want to share, and he responds substantively and thoughtfully.
Put simply, it’s rare, at least in my experience to find a Doctor so obviously devoted to his work and to the well-​being of his patients. Dr. Subramanyan is wise beyond his years and I have no doubt he’ll be a leader in his field.

I have been seeing Dr. Subramanyan for six years. He is deeply perceptive — he has a way of getting right to the heart of things, and has pinpointed issues I have struggled with for years, providing profound insights that have greatly improved my understanding of myself and my interactions with others. Perhaps even more impressive, on the rare occasions when I think his analysis is slightly off in some way, he listens carefully to what I have to say and either admits that he may have misunderstood me or non-​defensively explains how I may have misunderstood him. He is also extremely knowledgeable about medication, keeps up with current literature and studies, and is adept at explaining how meds work and interact with each other. I feel respected and supported by him, and his gentle and intelligent guidance has been consistently helpful over the years. I highly recommend him, both for psychotherapy and for medication management.

I’ve been seeing Dr. Subramanyan for regular sessions for about four years. My understanding is that he sees patients for medication management and/​or for ongoing psychotherapy. Dr. Subramanyan does not take insurance, which makes him unavailable to some, but your plan may reimburse you. I’ve seen different therapists over the years, and the most important factor in choosing a therapist is to have a personal connection and to feel like the therapist cares. There’s not much you can do about that part of it – either you have a good rapport or you don’t.
Above and beyond that, however, Dr. Subramanyan’s approach is understated and kind. But this should not minimize how remarkably insightful and intelligent this man is. I feel like he complete understands me. With the most gentle questions he somehow helps me gain the much needed healing that helps me be calmer, stronger and cope better. I am more than a decade older than him, and sometimes I’ve thought this might represent a chasm, but I’m always amazed at his depth of understanding. I can’t quite comprehend the poor review because my experience has been so positive over such a sustained period of time.

I would strongly recommend that you think twice before going to this doctor. My daughter had a serious car accident and was/​is suffering from what we now know is PTSD. Unfortuately when we went to Dr Subramanyan, he misdiagnosed her (totally missing this) and put her on celexa to treat OCD (which was one of the symptoms she was experiencing). He told her it would relieve her symptoms and give her more energy — she was at the time an elite athlete. Celexa is not the drug that should be used for PTSD. When it did not work, he doubled the dose. This caused her to go into Serotonin overload. We went back to him (probably a mistake) and he commented that she must be in the top 2% who are sensitive to the drug. Funny thing is we told him she was ultra-​sensitive to medications before he doubled the dose. When we asked him for help getting off the drug, his answer was to put her on another drug. When we said this was not acceptable, he basically washed his hands of us. What arrogance! But, perhaps all he knows are drugs, and feels drugs solve all problems. I would like to know where is the medical training? Aren’t MD’s supposed to be caregivers? My daughter continues to suffer from this and I can tell you it is extraordinarily hard to get off this drug. So if you would like to avoid a lot of pain, either don’t waste your time here, or at least get another opinion before he puts you or one of your loved ones on drugs. Given another chance I would have been a lot more aggressive in pushing back against his rush to drugs. Unfortunately we were not. Hope you learn from us.

This review is for anyone who has no idea where to start when looking for a psychiatrist in SF. First, I never actually met with Dr. Subramanyan, as he doesn’t take my insurance (BCBS). Rather, I had a brief conversation with him when he returned my call and took the time to review my list of providers and make recommendations for me. He also gave me some advice re: how to go about choosing a psychiatrist. I don’t really know much about Dr. Subramanyan, but I thought I’d at least recommend him as a starting point for anyone else who is without recommendations or ideas…