Dr. Thomas Dewey Lupton, MD

I feel for this doctor because he is a cog in a larger machine that is Kaiser Permanente. KP designates therapy people and medicine people, and this doctor was doing his job. He is a medicine person. I was sent to him by way of a misunderstanding, needing therapy and getting medicine instead. I needed someone to talk to. I got off of work because I really needed to talk to someone, but I wasn't suicidal, so I went to the Psychiatry department at KP expecting that maybe there might be somebody on call to take in people with psychiatric issues that every once in a while really need therapy, and NOW. There is none of this. You can only have breakdowns by appointment.At the end of my session with this doctor, after he had created a 16 page document full of medicines I will never use, and pre-packaged advice I wouldn't have even known was present had I not decided to actually look through it later, I clarified that at this point I didn't need medicine, I needed someone to talk to. … He apologized and tried to clear up the misunderstanding. It was very clear (he mentioned several times) that I had exceeded my time window and this was very stressful for him. He called the person who had made the referral that morning and realized there was a misunderstanding that I thought I would get talk therapy when it was actually just a medicine consultation. This situation escalated. I was distressed and the worst part is that I felt like this guy was more distressed than I was. Finally he went to talk to somebody and returned and proceeded to scold me for not having come to two prior appointments, telling me that I couldn't just walk in there and expect to get somebody to talk to without an appointment. I want to emphasize that I understand that this doctor was doing his job and he is very constrained by the system. But I felt like this psychiatrist had no idea what to do when a patient started crying from distress, needing somebody to talk to. He reacted with panic, hurried stress, scrambling, and a huge amount of discomfort and then self-righteous indignation that I would even dare to come to my health care provider and expect care- then proceeded to walk me out. Not out into the main office- out by the elevator. I came expecting care and I left feeling more lonely and depressed than when I had come in. Care? Don't expect it from this guy. He called me back later, but I got the impression it was just because he was covering himself and realized how horribly he had treated me. How do you spend all the money and time in med school and come out and treat people like that and go home and sleep at night? How do you go into a field like psychiatry where people need emotional care the MOST and come out acting like a frenzied pharmacist? Go into pharmacy and save other patients the pain and distress.