Dr. Boris Rubinstein, MD

After many years as a patient of Dr. Rubinstein, I’ve shared my personal story in a video titled ‘My 20 Years with Boris Rubinstein — And the Post-Treatment Actions Involving Halina Rubinstein.’ I’ve also written an accompanying blog. These reflect only my own experience and may be helpful to others researching care.

I trusted Boris Rubinstein with my life because of who he was to my family. My mother grew up with him in Mexico. My father was his colleague and longtime friend. I had known him since I was a child. I believed that someone so deeply embedded in my family’s life would treat me with even better care, after all, I always liked him and by 1999 had known him for 30 years. That belief turned out to be the worst mistake I have ever made. What I did not consider were all the personal relationships. By the time I became his patient, there were family dynamics involving members of Boris’s family and mine that involved dissolved relationships and that called into question Boris’s ability to maintain any form of objectivity. From the start, the boundaries that are supposed to protect patients simply did not exist. I entered what I came to realize to have been a profoundly inappropriate and harmful psychiatrist-patient relationship that lasted for two decades. Over more than 20 years, I was… subjected to extremely harmful prescribing. I was prescribed extraordinarily high doses of a physically addictive drug along with over 50 other psychiatric medications and as many as 7 at a time. I repeatedly asked about long-term safety and Boris consistently reassured me it was fine. Only much later did I come to understand how serious the risks were and how false those reassurances had been. I am still living with the consequences today. Because of his relationship with my parents, I was never billed. In fact, I never asked for any “professional courtesy”, Boris simply didn’t bill me. At the time, I thought this reflected generosity. I later learned that “professional courtesy” billing practices are strongly discouraged in the APA’s Principles of Ethics stating that such practices lead to poor psychiatric care and maintain dependence on the doctor. Thanks to Boris, I was physically dependent on one drug and I received his prescribing services for free. For 19 years, I was prescribed high-doses of this dangerous drug. Over time, his free services no longer felt like kindness or generosity - it felt like a form of control. The most shocking events occurred after I ended my relationship with him. Private emails I had written to Boris as a former patient - expressing anger, distress, and pain over what I believed to have been the horrendous care I received from him - he shared with my elderly parents, both in their 80s. He told them I had lost touch with reality and that what I wrote online about him could lead to my being arrested if not removed. Not once did Boris reach out to me before doing the unthinkable. Watching them become frightened and deeply unsettled by private communications that should have remained confidential was one of the most upsetting experiences of my life. The damage to me by going to Boris has been devastating: to my health (emotional and physical), my finances, my trust in mental health providers and my family relationships. What I experienced went far beyond disappointment or poor care, it represented a complete collapse of the ethical boundaries I believed psychiatry was built on. Boris presents himself as warm, attentive, and trustworthy. Nope. There isn’t one honest, sincere or genuine thing that comes out of his mouth and there was no such thing as confidentiality. Behind that amiable facade is a man who is as dark as they come. Upon confronting him, I saw the real Boris Rubinstein and it’s not pretty. Walking into his office is the greatest regret of my life, and the harm I suffered there is something I will carry forever. What is here barely touches the surface of what I experienced from this man and reflects only a portion of my experience. I plan to share the full story elsewhere in a longer format.

Excellent treatment.

That my children have seen Dr. Rubinstein. He embodies the best characteristics of what it takes to be a meeting professional in his field. Both sensitive and compassionate, he clearly demarcates the boundaries for all. Additionally, he goes above and beyond but one might expect from a doctor in his follow-up. The man is a gift to anyone seeking therapy.

He treated my son for ADHD, Tourette syndrome.. He is a Competent, caring, wonderful doctor.