Dr. Anna Shostak, MD

The only good thing about Dr. Shostak is that she helped me get off of Paxil, after I was on it for over 10 years and tried unsuccessfully to getting off it (had terrible withdrawal symptoms). She put me on 20 mg of Lexapro, which is supposedly easier to discontinue than Paxil, and seemed to be pretty content with following the usual script: "How are you?" "How's your sleep?" "How's your appetite?" "Any side effects?" "You seem fine, so here's another prescription", and so on. I told her that I would like to have kids someday and don't want to be on meds forever, and she kept saying that we'll talk about it when I decide to get pregnant. One day I deviated from her script and told her that I would like to taper off the Lexapro because I was in a good place in my life and my mood was fine, with the occasional anxiety. She immediately asked "Why do you need to taper off now? Are you trying to get pregnant?" I said that I'm doing well and take Xanax very rarely, only when my anxiety is… bad, and she was like, "If you have bad anxiety sometimes, why do you need to get off now?" So she was willing to risk me having withdrawal symptoms when I was pregnant rather than earlier, when I was stable. We spoke for a bit and she reluctantly agreed to reduce my dosage to 15 mg, and when I expressed concern about tapering off even slower, she was like, "Fine, let's do 17.5 mg" with the kind of attitude that says "OK, whatever you want. Now get out and leave me alone." I ended up leaving her and found a great psychiatric nurse at Soho MD, who was kind and supportive and helped me go down to 12.5 mg (and counting). And unlike Dr. Shostak, she didn't suggest upping the dosage as the only possible solution to any setback. Tl;dr: Avoid this doctor.