Dr. Spitzer has been the Associate Director for the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit at Montefiore Medical Center and Associate Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine since 2007 and is a private practitioner based in New York City. Since graduating from Long Island University in 2001, she has followed her passion working with underserved populations dealing with serious and persistent mental illness.
The diversity of her experience includes a research study for the Philadelphia Geriatric Center to identify the special needs of long-term care patients who are survivors of the Holocaust. Her dedication to public service continued at the Adolescent Pavilion of the North Shore – LIJ Health System. In her role as the supervising psychologist for the adolescent, psychiatric inpatient unit, she provided individual and family psychotherapy, group therapy, psychoeducation, and case management to adolescents presenting with Axis I and Axis II disorders. Dr. Spitzer later served as the supervising psychologist on a new, first-run, Intensive Treatment Unit for adult male inmates on Rikers Island which she helped develop and implement. This program provided treatment for inmates serving punitive segregation and solitary confinement while incarcerated.
In addition to providing direct patient care to the underrepresented, Dr. Spitzer has lent her expertise to the training of future psychologists throughout her career. As supervising psychologist at the Adolescent Pavilion, she presented didactic seminars and instructed psychology trainees in a Yalom-oriented, interpersonal psychotherapy group and a Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills group. Presently, as the Associate Director and Assistant Professor at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Dr. Spitzer provides consultation to a multi-disciplinary treatment team on behavioral management techniques for the milieu treatment program, including the management of crisis and individualized behavior plans for high-risk patients.
Dr. Spitzer particularly enjoys her supervisory role in these intense clinical environments, working with psychology and psychiatry trainees, as well as consulting with multidisciplinary staff in all parts of the hospital. She has cultivated a career that mixes her daily responsibilities on the inpatient unit with the challenges of working with private practice patients on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Dr. Spitzer is also happy to say that her work allows her time for her greater passion, her family, which includes her husband, and two young sons.
Congratulations Dr. Spitzer on your many accomplishments!