Our Mission

To offer comprehensive, integrative psychiatric assessments that lead to efficient treatments and improved outcomes for adolescents with complex mental health problems

The Krasner Adolescent Institute is an assessment program made up of an interdisciplinary team of experts focused on the assessment of complex teens, young adults, and families that have not made progress with conventional psychiatric treatments and assessments.   Commonly, our patients have struggled for many years with combinations of psychiatric problems that have eluded clinicians, assessors, and families resulting in persistent impairments that debilitate hope.  These kids have tried multiple medications, engaged in various therapies, and tried different treatment programs and their families have tried to be supportive but the benefits have been limited.  Our patients are often suffering, their families feel frustrated, and their clinical teams are uncertain about how to proceed.  Our Institute was configured to engage these kids, their families, and the broader treatment systems at an extremely vulnerable point when hope, clarity, and a sense of mission and purpose are at an all-time low.  We take this clinical situation and our roles within it very seriously and find satisfaction in helping our patients and their families to gain traction where previously there was none.  

But this is no easy enterprise.  

The simple rendering of our approach to this problem is as follows: we carefully trace the ontogeny of adolescent and transitional age psychopathology through history by doggedly collecting data, analyzing current levels of function, and immersing ourselves in the family.  We have parsed these roles into a team of eight people who meet weekly to discuss the case and present findings.  Each clinician authors a report from a specific perspective - for example, an arts-based assessment - and the founders craft an executive summary that integrates the assessment and plan into a pithy, cogent report that is action-oriented.  We offer case management before, during, and after the rigorous assessment process such that the database of collateral information, organization of in vivo assessments, and future planning becomes easy - a far cry from the typically disorganized, piecemeal structure that even our most diligent families assemble in an effort to track and optimize treatments.  

Because our team is comprised of a diverse group of thinkers, our formulations are enriched by multiple theoretical perspectives.  Because our team is seasoned by many years of experience, our recommendations are rooted in pragmatic approaches to problems that, when clarified, can be addressed in a systematic fashion over time.  Because we prioritize case management, our ability to collect a vast array of data and make incisive clinical recommendations is feasible and trackable.  Because we appreciate the enormity of these situations and our roles within them, we have been successful in creating a holding environment - not just for the individual teen - such that new possibilities present themselves, sometimes in surprising ways.  And because we are ultimately accountable for our work, we are available to our teens and families not just during the assessment, but thereafter. 

 We like our work. 

Our team enjoys the process of clinical collaboration, the challenge of studying a complex case, and managing the tensions that invariably arise in so doing.  We all maintain busy private practices and engage this work as an exciting addition to our work in the trenches - we find the task of standing with a family at such an important crossroads to be a privilege that we hope to protect and nurture.  We view our work as comparable to an Intensive Care Unit - high stakes, highly integrated, team-based, and so very important.  Like the ICU teams, we love our work and thrive in the kind of intensity that the clinical situation imparts.  Like ICU teams we take great pride when our patients stabilize and over time make the kinds of treatment gains they so desperately deserve.  

If you, or a family you know, could benefit from the wisdom, compassion, and discipline of the KAI team, please reach out.