Dr. Roberta Caetano Dracxler Meaker, MD

It’s rare to find a kind and empathetic psychiatrist-this clinician saved me from a very scary situation. Thank you!

Initially I saw Roberta to treat me for Bipolar III. She seemed kind, empathetic, and at least reasonably knowledgable about my illness and the medications. While seeing her, we found through blood work that Lithium had induced a pretty severe level of hypothyroidism that I now know is due to Hashimoto’s, which was expressed in a more extreme level because of Lithium. My PCP ordered more investigatory tests into my thyroid and I had blood draws done for both PCP and this psychiatrist a week before treatment, which is normally plenty of time to get results. My results unfortunately came the morning of my next appointment with Dr. Dracxler and based on the recommendation of my PCP I asked to move our appointment until my thyroid was back in order. It is both dangerous and ill-reasoned to alter a psychiatric drug regimen in the presence of unaddressed Hashimoto’s. She flatly refused, citing her ‘policy’ in private practise that patients give 48 hours notice. Due to extenuating… circumstance with a physical illness and the timing of my tests, I found her inflexibility on this point unacceptable. There was no fault on my part that I became seriously sick. I still said I would come to my appointment until I saw that she never ordered draws for Tegretol, the other serious drug I take, which she had ordered me to increase by 200mg a month earlier when she saw me. Blood tests showed serious kidney irregularities which Tegretol is notorious for causing, and when I confronted her about not ordering the test I said I couldn’t conceive of how a 350 dollar appointment with someone who takes no insurance and has no new information about my case would be doing anything but assuring her personal income. The practises of psychiatrists in the United States need to be more closely regulated, as she never caught my elevated levels, forgot to order critical tests, and refused to bend when she was clearly in the wrong. Her private practise is pretty new and if she continues in such a feckless manner I won’t be surprised if her practise fails miserably. Pay through the nose for her typical lack of empathy and shirking of responsibility at your own risk.