Amy Leung, MD, psychiatrist, engaged with me in many unethical ways. I was briefly her patient. I was referred to her by the clinical psychologist I was working with in psychotherapy at that time. She is personable enough and was very thorough in the intake that took two sessions to complete. During that intake, she suggested a particular intervention for me and that she offered that intervention/service. Then at the end of our second session when I was eager to schedule the start of our work, she said she did not engage in such work unless the client/patient had been working with her for some time, like one to two years, as a psychotherapy patient. I have a PhD in clinical psychology myself from an APA-accredited program and was trained in an APA-accredited residency.
What Dr. Leung's behavioral stance said to me were many things, but I'll limit my discussion to what I think are Amy Leung's primary motivations. First, she wanted to interrupt my already being seen by the psychologist who referred me to her, a friend and long-standing colleague of hers, and she was audaciously trying to steal me away from that relatively new but clearly established relationship to have me for herself as a client. It is completely unethical to engage with two psychotherapists at the same time. Second, she wanted to earn money in psychotherapy with me instead of just performing the adjunct therapy for which I was referred to her as a psychiatrist. Third, for over a month, she fully abandoned me and did nothing about my case when I did not contact here about her illicit request for me to engage with her about psychotherapy which would have meant putting the onus on me to discontinue or be treated by two psychotherapists at one time. When a month later I brought this up to my psychologist in strictest confidence (I stated directly that my psychologist was not to communicate a word to Amy Leung...), that psychologist broke confidentiality, discussed the situation with Amy Leung against my explicit instructions to not do so, and the next morning I fired that psychologist upon learning of her breach to Amy Leung of my explicit instructions to not discuss anything I said in session with her but did so anyway.
Amy Leung had zero ethics during my interactions with her. She both wanted fees first and me to be engaged in illicit, unethical multiple professional psychotherapeutic relationships so that she could get those fees at my expense instead of just providing the adjunct service she identified for which I was a candidate during my intake.
It is bad enough how expensive Amy Leung's fees are that she has to engage in these behaviors to try to hook me into a one- to two-year psychotherapeutic relationship when I'm already in one and that she then abandoned me in an effort to get me to act so that her unethical bordering on illegal behavior would not be more obvious, behaviors nowhere in the interests of a client/patient. As a person working in healthcare myself since 1986 and at age 60, the sickness of these sorts of behaviors at the expense of a client greatly saddens me.
This is a true and accurate statement of my interactions with the psychiatrist Amy Leung in Albany, CA on San Pablo Ave., and I would never recommend any person to ever see her in a professional capacity.
Mark S. Pirie, PhD
