Dr. Catherine S O Connell, PhD

Dr. O'Connell may be well trained, but she is definitely not good in practice. I would never recommend that anyone waste their time going to her. Perhaps she was better when she was younger.

When she repeatedly FELL ASLEEP during my initial visit, I was upset because I had made it clear that I had been in need of therapy for a long while and that it would be a cathartic initial session for me. She kept dozing off, and I politely averted my gaze and kept speaking. It was becoming very uncomfortable, but I kept my mouth shut until the very end of the session. I clapped my hands to jar her awake, told her that it very much bothered me that she was dozing while I poured out my experiences and symptoms to her, a person with whom I was so relieved to finally start working. She wrote a completely INCORRECT diagnosis on the form I was sent to the desk with, and not surprisingly. (I am trained in field & DSM-V) At our second session, I opened up about it. I told her how it had kept bothering me, how unacceptable it was, the possible ramifications for me, and also for those patients that may be feeling hopeless, and she gave me new excuses. First session she had said she didn't sleep well the night before. Second session she said it was allergies, and when I noted that it was a different reason, she said how the allergies were the reason for the sleeplessness. REGARDLESS, her position is one of great responsibility, and if she cannot be attuned to her patients during their time with her, then she should not be in the office that day. Pegging a common diagnosis onto a patient you couldn't begin to know, having missed key symptoms, is reckless. To continue, our second (and last) session included about a half- dozen nod-offs, some I ignored, some I didn't. We were not through the allotted time before I stopped mid-sentence, and snapped both fingers to wake her up (she did, with a jolt) so she could watch me walk out of her office.