Providing guidance and expertise on how medications can enhance life and the therapeutic process.

I’m most passionate about helping people get unstuck. By combining both therapy and medications, there is a unique opportunity to accelerate growth and transformation and overcome the obstacles that are in your way. 

Prior to this career, mental health was an enigma to me. I had the natural desire to want to lift burdens and honestly just make people smile, but I didn’t grow up in a time, place, or culture, where I had access to the language to describe what was happening in my own inner world as life brought challenges and hardship. 

In medical training, I couldn’t help but lean and then dive into self-discovery. A force that brought me to this profession of healing with methods of science, behavior, and spirituality. 

My clinical mission as a board-certified psychiatrist in the Bay Area is to provide guidance and expertise for how medications can enhance life and augment the therapeutic process.

Bay Area Psychiatrist

Academic & Professional Background

Undergraduate:

Dartmouth College

  • Varsity Football

  • 2012 Class Marshal

  • Presidential Fellow

Medical School:

Vanderbilt University

  • Class President

  • Gold Humanism Honor Society

  • School of Medicine Award of Distinction

Psychiatry Training - Residency:

University of California, Los Angeles

  • Chief, Veterans Affairs - Women’s Mental Health Clinic

  • Chief, Informatics

  • Chief, UCLA Asylum Clinic

Professional Clinical Experiences:

  • Chief of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San Jose

  • Director of Behavioral Health in Family Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine at Dominican Hospital, Santa Cruz

  • Attending Psychiatrist, CalPsychiatry, Los Angeles | Palo Alto

  • Attending Psychiatrist, Office of Jail Diversion & Re-entry, Los Angeles County

Research Publications:

  • Agrawal, A., Gitlin, M., Melancon, S.N.T. et al. Responding to a Tragedy: Evaluation of a Postvention Protocol Among Adult Psychiatry Residents. Acad Psychiatry 45, 262–271 (2021).

  • Feola, B., Melancon, S. N. T., Clauss, J. A., Noall, M. P., Mgboh, A., Flook, E. A., Benningfield, M. M., & Blackford, J. U. (2021). Bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and amygdala responses to unpredictable threat in children. Developmental Psychobiology. 

  • Allaway R. J, Wood M. D, Downey S. L, Bouley S. J, Traphagen N. A, Wells J. D, Batra J., Melancon S., Ringelberg C., Seibel W., Ratner N., Sanchez Y. Exploiting mitochondrial and metabolic homeostasis as a vulnerability in NF1 deficient cells. Oncotarget. 2018; 9: 15860-15875.

  • Wise ES, Gadomski SP 2nd, Ilg AM, Bermudez C, Chan EW, Izmaylov ML, Gridley SJ, Kaczmarek JV, Melancon SN, Ahmad S, Hocking KM, Diaz JJ, Kavic SM. Independent Preoperative Predictors of Prolonged Length of Stay after Laparoscopic Appendectomy in Patients Over 30 Years of Age: Experience from a Single Institution. Am Surg. 2016 Nov 1;82(11):1092-1097.

My knowledge and expertise comes from pursuing a wide range of clinical experiences. I have diagnosed and treated thousands of patients in various settings: emergency rooms, psychiatric hospital wards, intensive care units, outpatient clinics, labor & delivery, acute rehab centers, nursing homes, therapy clinics, and street medicine. My patients have ranged from professional athletes to refugees seeking asylum.

  • Depression psychiatrist

  • ADHD psychiatrist

  • Anxiety psychiatrist

  • OCD Psychiatrist

  • PTSD Trauma Psychiatrist