Psychiatry in Birmingham: What It Looks Like When Your Prescriber and Your Therapist Actually Talk

Psychiatry in Birmingham: What It Looks Like When Your Prescriber and Your Therapist Actually Talk Empower Counseling now offers psychiatry and medication management in Birmingham, Alabama. Dymond Callen, DMSc, PA-C, Psych CAQ, is a psychiatric physician assistant with doctoral-level training and specialty certification in psychiatry. She provides psychiatric evaluation and medication management for teens 14 and older and adults — anxiety, depression, bipolar I and II, OCD, trauma and PTSD, schizophrenia, and PMDD — in person in Birmingham and online throughout Alabama. She prescribes in collaboration with Dr. Philip Wasef, a board-certified psychiatrist. You do not have to be an Empower therapy client to see her, and the first consultation is free. That is the practical answer. The rest of this is for the woman who has read that paragraph three times and still has not clicked anything.

You may already recognize yourself here

You have already done the work. “I’ve been in therapy for two years. I can explain exactly why I’m like this.” “I understand it. It hasn’t changed anything.” You are not short on insight. You have more of it than most people in your life. You can name the pattern, trace it back to where it started, and predict the exact moment it will show up again — and then it shows up again anyway, and you watch it happen from somewhere just outside your own body. Knowing has never been the problem. Insight is necessary and it is not always sufficient, and there is a particular exhaustion that comes from understanding yourself completely and still not being able to get out of bed on a Tuesday. That exhaustion is not evidence that therapy failed you. It may be evidence that something biological is holding the floor down, and that it needs to be addressed on its own terms.

You do not want to be on medication.

“I should be able to handle this myself.” “If I need something, doesn’t that mean something is actually wrong with me?” “I’ll think about it if nothing else works.” The reluctance almost always comes from somewhere good. You are the one who handles things. You have absorbed other people’s emergencies for years without asking anyone to absorb yours, and needing something does not just feel uncomfortable — it contradicts the story you have been living inside. That self-reliance has carried you, and it has carried people who never knew they were being carried. It is not a character flaw. It is also, right now, the thing standing between you and something that might work. Medication is not the opposite of doing the work. For a lot of women it is what makes the work reachable — it turns the volume down enough that the therapy hour can actually land. Adding psychotherapy to medication produces better outcomes than either one alone across depression and anxiety disorders (Cuijpers et al., World Psychiatry, 2014). These are not competing options. They are one treatment with two arms.

The two weeks before your period are a different life: Psychiatry in Birmingham

“I’m fine, and then I’m not, and then I’m fine again and I’m mortified.” “I’ve apologized for the same two weeks every month for fifteen years.” You have probably been told this is normal. You may have been told it is hormones and left there, as if that were a treatment plan. You have likely tracked it yourself and noticed the pattern is not vague at all — it is a calendar, and it is reliable, and it costs you something real every month. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a diagnosable condition with established medication treatment, and it is one of the most under-recognized presentations in women’s mental health. Being told you are sensitive is not the same as being evaluated.

You are pregnant, and someone told you to stop.

“I stopped everything the day the test was positive.” “I’d rather feel like this for nine months than risk anything happening to her.” You stopped because you love her. That came from the most protective instinct you have, and no one should shame you for it. Here is what the evidence actually says. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ 2023 Clinical Practice Guideline on treatment of mental health conditions in pregnancy and postpartum recommends against withholding or discontinuing psychiatric medication on the basis of pregnancy or lactation status alone. Untreated illness in pregnancy is not a neutral choice — it carries its own risks, to you and to the pregnancy. The right answer is not automatic in either direction. It is a weighing, done with someone who knows the specific data on specific medications, rather than a blanket rule applied by someone who is guessing. Whatever brought you here — you do not have to have it figured out. You just have to show up.  

Who Dymond is, and what “Psych CAQ” means: Psychiatry in Birmingham

A physician assistant is a licensed medical provider who diagnoses conditions, orders and interprets labs, and prescribes medication. The Psychiatric CAQ — Certificate of Added Qualifications — is a specialty credential that means her training and clinical practice are concentrated in psychiatric medicine rather than general medicine. In Alabama, PAs prescribe in collaboration with a supervising physician; Dymond’s is Dr. Philip Wasef, a board-certified psychiatrist. Her path to this work went through nursing first. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Tuskegee University, a Master of Public Health and a Master of Physician Assistant Studies from UAB, and a Doctorate of Medical Science from Pacific University. What this means for you in practical terms: the same prescribing capability you would get from a psychiatrist, with better availability. In a metro area where a new psychiatric evaluation routinely means a months-long wait for a fifteen-minute appointment, availability is not a small thing.

What Dymond treats

Psychiatric evaluation and medication management for teens 14 and older and adults, including anxiety including panic and social anxiety, depression including major depressive disorder and seasonal affective disorder, bipolar disorder types I and II, OCD, trauma and PTSD, schizophrenia, PMDD, and medication questions in pregnancy and the postpartum year.

One thing we want you to know before you book.

Dymond also evaluates and treats ADHD, currently with non-stimulant medications — atomoxetine, guanfacine, and bupropion among them, which are genuine evidence-based options and are often the better fit for women who cannot tolerate stimulants, who are pregnant or breastfeeding, or who have cardiac or substance-history considerations. She is not prescribing stimulant medications while her DEA registration is pending. If a stimulant prescription or transfer is the specific reason you are reaching out, say so when you book and we will tell you plainly where things stand rather than let you find out in the room. If your diagnosis is one of the ones with a frightening word in it — if someone said bipolar and you stopped hearing anything after that — it is worth saying plainly that a diagnosis is a map, not a verdict. It describes what is happening so treatment can be matched to it. It says nothing about your character or your future. In person in Birmingham · Online throughout Alabama · Teens 14+ and adults · Out-of-network, private pay

Why it matters that your prescriber talks to your therapist: Psychiatry for Women Birmingham

Split care is the American default, and it is where a great deal of treatment quietly falls apart. Your therapist notices you have been flat for a month and has no way to tell your prescriber. Your prescriber changes a dose and no one is watching the daily effect. You become the messenger between two clinicians who have never spoken. Integrated care is not a marketing idea — it is one of the most replicated findings in mental health services research. The IMPACT trial (Unützer et al., JAMA, 2002) established that coordinating medication and behavioral treatment produces meaningfully better outcomes than referring out and hoping.

You do not have to leave your therapist to work with Dymond.

If you are already seeing someone you trust — at another practice, anywhere in Alabama — keep her. With your written permission, Dymond will coordinate directly with your therapist regardless of where she practices: what she is observing, what is changing, what is not. The relationship you have built is an asset to your treatment, not an obstacle to it, and no one here is going to ask you to start over in order to get a prescription. If you are looking for a therapist as well, that coordination is already built in at Empower. If you are pregnant or postpartum, Dymond can work alongside Anna Mills Fleenor, who specializes in perinatal mental health. If trauma or OCD is driving the picture, Marti Burton. If food and body image are part of it, Payton Wortman or Hannah Diller. If you are a high-achieving woman whose anxiety has been mistaken for competence for twenty years, Kathryn Ely. Either way, the goal is the same: one coherent treatment instead of two clinicians who have never met.

What happens at your first appointment

Your first appointment is a psychiatric evaluation, and we would rather say that plainly than have you arrive expecting something else. Dymond will ask about your symptoms, your medical history, what you have tried, what helped, what did not, and what you are afraid of. You do not need a diagnosis to book. Figuring out what is going on is her job, not a prerequisite you are supposed to bring with you. You will not be handed a prescription and dismissed. You may leave with one. You may leave with a plan to start one after labs. You may leave having decided together that medication is not the right move right now — and that is a legitimate outcome, and she will tell you if she thinks it. Follow-up is close at the beginning and spaces out as things stabilize. This is an ongoing partnership, not a one-time prescription.   You have carried this a long time, and you have carried it competently, which is exactly why so few people have noticed how heavy it has been. You reached out. That matters. Dymond Callen, DMSc, PA-C, Psych CAQ, is accepting new clients now. The first consultation is free. You do not have to be an Empower therapy client to book it, and if you already have a therapist you trust, you are keeping her.

You are not alone. Let’s begin.

Schedule your free psychiatry consultation →

More from Empower: Psychiatry in Birmingham & Therapy in Birmingham

Medication is one arm of treatment. Here is the other, and everywhere it reaches. Dymond’s psychiatry and medication management sits alongside the therapy side of the practice, where Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is the foundation. If what brought you here was anxiety or the flatness of depression, those are the two we see most. OCD and ADHD both respond well to medication and therapy together. For trauma, EMDR is often the route through. And when food and body are part of the picture, or when perfectionism has been running things for years, or when you are in the middle of a transition you did not choose — there is a clinician here for each of those. Who you would see depends on what you bring. Kathryn Ely founded the practice and works with women who have done everything they can think of and still feel like it is not enough. Marti Burton takes trauma and OCD. Payton Wortman and Hannah Hattaway both work with eating disorders, from different angles. Anna Mills Fleenor is our perinatal specialist. Savannah Thrower works with ADHD and neurodivergence. And Dymond Callen prescribes. We also see people at particular stages of it: teens, college students, young adults, and working professionals, including attorneys and others in high-pressure practice. Kathryn also does speaking and training for organizations. Nearly all of it is available online anywhere in Alabama. In person, we are in Birmingham and see clients from Homewood, Trussville, Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, Forest Park, Tuscaloosa, and Auburn.