Dr. Michael Ethan Gelb, MD

Paid thousands of dollars for nothing

Dr. Gelb should not work with patients but rather in a lab writing for medical journals. During a crisis he is more interested in CYA of his notes than helping the patient!

Dr. Gelb is the best psychiatrist I've ever been to. I appreciated how much time he spent with me. I moved and have been trying to find a new psychiatrist in my area, but haven't met any one as good as him.

For 2 months I agonized being on Geodone. It was destroying my life and instead of taking me off of this horrible drug, he kept insisting on increasing my dose. I ended up in the hospital and it took me another 2 months to recover. I finally made it back to work and have been more than functional for the past 1 1/2 years. Dr. Gelb was more interested in working with my boyfriend than in helping me. My boyfriend became irritated in the way he totally disregarded my care. I ended up only using Dr. Gelb for my medication referral. I would never recommend his service. He is more impressed with medication than in truly helping patients.

I was unable to find any other psychiatrist who both took my coverage and was within a mile of my home; I literally called 30 doctors and all were either booked out two months or not accepting new patients (I later heard from a few sources in the psychiatric community that there is quite a shortage of MDs in Portland). Dr. Gelb was available about a month out, so I took the appointment. In the interim, my depression greatly worsened and I was hospitalized. I hate to say it, but he might've intentionally "thrown the interview" when he found out that I had pretty severe depression because he didn't want to deal with a more difficult case. He was arrogant, humorless, patronizing, impatient, and negative--he didn't bother to shake my hand or in any way attempt to make me feel welcome. Quite the contrary: he said in the first five minutes: "let's get this straight: if you're not seeing this therapist, I WILL NOT work with you," without even giving me a chance to express my excitement about… working with said therapist. I left there quite depressed and a bit angry about some of the things he had said. I only saw him once, but that was quite enough; perhaps he's pleasant enough once you get to know him, if you don't need complicated care; I certainly can't comment on his competence, either. But it seems to me that bedside manner is of utmost import if you're a shrink--if you can't even be nice to your new patients, I really think it's time to throw in the proverbial towel. Perhaps I should've anticipated sub-par service since he was the only shrink psychiatrist available, when all of his peers were busy. Dunno.