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Ashraf Elmashat, MD, is a compassionate clinician, a certified neuropsychiatrist, and a distinguished brain scientist. He currently sees patients at Ocean View Neuropsychiatry in Orange county, California.

Dr. Elmashat completed his residency in adult psychiatry and a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Southern California. He is currently certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in both adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry.

Immediately after completing his training, Dr. Elmashat was recruited to serve as a faculty member at the University of California San Diego’s School of Medicine, where he has been an associate professor in the psychiatry department for over 15 years. During his time at UCSD, he’s served as the director of the La Jolla multi-specialty programs, founded and directed the telepsychiatry program and executive mental health program, and regularly teaches medical students and residents.

Dr. Elmashat has always maintained a passionate interest in innovative and non-invasive treatments. In 2017, he decided to finally pursue that passion by opening up a clinical practice geared towards developing and utilizing those treatments. He greatly enjoys working with his patients at Ocean View Neuropsychiatry, and looks forward to continuing to help all of them discover a brighter, better future.

Mohamed Yaser Elatrozy, MD, was born and raised in Southern California and is an Adult and Child psychiatrist with 20 years of experience and a double board-certification, serving patients at Ocean View Neuropsychiatry in Orange county, California

Dr. Elatrozy earned his medical degree from the University of Alexandria’s Faculty of Medicine in Alexandria Egypt, where he also completed an internship. He returned to the United States after medical school  to complete his residency in adult psychiatry at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia. Dr. Elatrozy went on further to complete a subspecialty fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 

Dr. Elatrozy has served as an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego and has worked with Orange County Behavioral Health Services. He’s also participated in numerous clinical research studies on schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorders, and tardive dyskinesia, and drug studies of Clozaril® and Zyprexa™.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Elatrozy has distinguished himself as a trusted source for the treatment of emotional, behavioral, and relationship difficulties in children, adolescents, adults, and families. He offers a variety of services, including diagnostic evaluations, consultations, and medication treatment (psychopharmacology), and works in a wide range of settings, such as inpatient care, outpatient care, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Elatrozy is passionate about helping children and their families discover their full potential by overcoming their emotional and behavioral challenges.

Hadi Estakhri, MD — or Dr. E as his patients know him — is a double board-certified, Harvard-trained psychiatrist practicing at Allied Psychiatry and Mental Health in Newport Beach, California.

With more than two decades of professional experience, Dr. E has vast proficiency in the mental health field. At Allied Psychiatry in Newport Beach, California, his expertise is in treating a wide range of psychiatric and addictive disorders in both adult and adolescents.

 

Dr. E completed his medical education at the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences and his first residency in psychiatry at Tehran Institute of Psychiatry. He was an attending psychiatrist in Iran for several years before relocating to the United States for his Post-Doc fellowship at Boston University Department of Biomedical Engineering. During his fellowship, he studied the role of genetic and environmental factors in mood disorders, schizophrenia, and addiction.

Dr. E then completed his second psychiatry residency at Harvard Medical School/Boston VA Healthcare system followed by his Addiction Psychiatry subspecialty training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. During his residency, he was trained at several well-regarded institutions including Mclean Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center where he received specialized education in psychopharmacology for depression, ADHD, and bipolar disorder, as well as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for treatment-resistant depression. With his extensive experience at VA Boston hospitals, he became an expert in treating PTSD. Furthermore, he received numerous academic awards throughout his residency training.

Dr. E holds a holistic view of human health and emphasizes collaboration with a patient's treatment team, including their therapist, primary care physician, and other involved specialists. He believes this is paramount to optimizing the quality of healthcare and, in turn, a better treatment outcome. 

Dr. E is one of only a few psychiatrists practicing in Orange County and Los Angele area, CA who is double board-certified in both General Psychiatry and Addiction Psychiatry. 

 

Dr. Joshua Flatow is certified in transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), deep-brain theta stimulation, and ketamine infusions. Dr. Flatow provides a compassionate, holistic approach to patient care. Dr. Flatow is committed to excellence and positive patient outcomes. He has experience in crisis stabilization, medication management, psychotherapy, and substance abuse treatment. Dr. Flatow completed his training at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, and received his doctor of medicine from the Medical College of Georgia, School of Medicine.

Alejandra Suzuki, MD, FAPA, is a double board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and TMS specialist at Americas TMS Center in Irvine, California. Dr. Suzuki comes from Japanese lineage but was born and grew up in Argentina, so she had a unique multi-cultural upbringing. Not only can she speak fluent English, Spanish, and Japanese, as a result, as well as French, but her background gives her invaluable insight and empathy for patients of many ethnicities.

Dr. Suzuki graduated from medical school at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina and took up a residency in ophthalmology, finding a particular interest in neuro-ophthalmology that took her to Japan to pursue research in the field. On her return, Dr. Suzuki enrolled in the University of Miami to research neuro-otology, but having awakened her passion for the human mind as well as the brain, she took a different career path with a residency in psychiatry at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Dr. Suzuki followed this with fellowship training in child psychiatry at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and received advanced training in transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Suzuki uses TMS therapy as a safe treatment option for children as she’s seen the effects medication can have on young people. She is one of the first psychiatrists in the United States to specialize in using TMS for the developing brain.

Dr. Suzuki’s particular passion is the mind and brain development of children. When she was training for her fellowship at UCLA, she took a year-long elective in the autism clinic and pursued further research into autism at the Brain Research Institute at UCLA. She currently supervises and teaches child psychiatry fellows of the CHOC neuropsychiatric clinic at the University of California in Irvine. Dr. Suzuki is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a member of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the Clinical TMS Society.

Dr. Suzuki’s approach to psychiatry is one of prevention wherever possible so that patients receive treatment at an early stage and thus recover more quickly, with fewer adverse effects, and she believes in collaborating with health care providers and integrating behavioral health and physical health. As defined by the IOM (Institute of Medicine), Dr. Suzuki provides care that is “respectful of, and responsive to, individual patient preferences, needs and values, and ensuring that patient values guide all clinical decisions.”

Maya Smolarek, MD, is a board-certified adult psychiatrist at Adelpha Psychiatric Group in Pasadena and Oakland, California. 

Dr. Smolarek graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley with a degree in Religious Studies. Although she pursued medical training to enter end-of-life care, she could not escape the allure of focusing on internal experience, meaning, and personal narrative in the specialty of Psychiatry. 

Dr. Smolarek graduated from UCLA medical school with a leadership award and induction into the Gold Humanism Honor Society for her merits in compassionate care. During Psychiatry Residency at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, she and a colleague co-founded the Women in Psychiatry group to further the education of trainees on issues related to women. She developed curricula for medical students and residents on sexual harassment during training and delivered talks on the subject at two national conventions. She served as Volunteer Clinical Faculty member at UCLA , teaching in the Interpersonal Therapy Clinic. 

Dr. Smolarek is experienced in treating the gamut of mood, anxiety, and psychotic disorders. She has specialty training in reproductive psychiatry (pertaining to menstrual, menopausal, and peripartum issues), geriatric psychiatry, PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, and bipolar disorder. She brings a background study of mysticism and Buddhism to her psychodynamic psychotherapy. Her holistic approach to care also includes an interest in affect-oriented and somatic therapy. LGBTQ+ affirming. 

Joan Striebel, MD, is a board-certified adult psychiatrist at Adelpha Psychiatric Group in Pasadena, California.

Before deciding to pursue medicine, Dr. Striebel taught in elementary schools, and her love of teaching has been a theme throughout her career. She attended medical school at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society.  After completing her residency at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Addiction Fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco, she spent ten years working in forensic settings, caring for patients with serious mental illness, providing psychopharmacology consultations, and teaching psychiatry residents and fellows. 

Dr. Striebel is trained in EMDR and is interested in treating trauma. She also has specialized expertise in treating psychosis, implementing clozapine, and in treating substance use disorders, particularly opioid use disorder. She completed a visiting fellowship in ECT, has served as an expert witness on ECT, and has written several book chapters related to mental illness and addiction. She is certified as an obesity medicine physician by the American Board of Obesity Medicine. 

She is a voluntary Clinical Assistant Professor and a teaching attending at the UCLA Psychosis Clinic. The UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences honored her with the award for Outstanding Volunteer Clinical Faculty Teaching 2024-2025.

Elizabeth Casalegno, MD, is a board-certified adult psychiatrist at Adelpha Psychiatric Group in Pasadena, California. 

Dr. Casalegno graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, San Diego, with a degree in biochemistry and cell biology. While at UCSD, she also studied abroad in the Bordeaux region of France, immersing herself in French culture and language. Later, she pursued her medical studies at the University of California, Davis. She ran a student-run clinic for low-income and minority patients and became an Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society member. 

Her interest in human behavior led her to complete her psychiatry residency training at UCLA, where she served as the chief resident of the whole training program.  

Dr. Casalegno specializes in treating various disorders with a careful selection of psychotropic medications in combination with individual psychotherapy and other interventional treatments such as TMS. She is also interested in reproductive psychiatry, psychotic disorders, and applying psychodynamically-informed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to treat mood and anxiety disorders, including OCD, aggressively.

Dr. Casalegno is a former member of the Volunteer Clinical Faculty at UCLA, where she was an attending physician in the Psychosis Clinic and the Resident Psychotherapy Clinic. She is also a UCLA Psychiatric Clinical Faculty Association (PCFA) board member.

Rahael Gupta, MD, is a board-certified adult psychiatrist and board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist at Adelpha Psychiatric Group in Pasadena, California. 

Dr. Gupta earned her BA in Human Biology from Stanford University and her MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She went on to earn her MD from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, where she was awarded the Raymond W. Waggoner Award for distinguished performance in psychiatry.

Dr. Gupta completed adult psychiatry residency training and child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at UCLA, serving as Program Chief Fellow and pursuing the Parent and Infant Mental Health Area of Distinction. During her fellowship, she became a certified facilitator of the Circle of Security International Early Intervention Program for Parents and Children (an attachment-based, reflective parenting program), facilitating groups for new mothers at UCLA’s Perinatal Intensive Outpatient Program. She received the 2024 UCLA Gertrude Rogers Greenblatt Award in Child Psychiatry, given to one fellow annually noted for their “deeply humane commitment to children and families requiring psychiatric care.”

Dr. Gupta has specialized training in psychopharmacology and psychotherapy for anxiety disorders, mood disorders, ADHD, eating disorders, and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism. She has experience with a wide variety of therapeutic techniques, including cognitive behavioral therapy, family-focused therapy, exposure and response prevention, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and executive function coaching. She is committed to a holistic and trauma-informed approach to care.

Yvonne Lu, MD, is a board-certified adult psychiatrist at Adelpha Psychiatric Group in Pasadena, California. She offers comprehensive, compassionate care across a wide range of mental health concerns and strives to cultivate a warm, open space for growth, resilience, and self-discovery.

As a first-generation Los Angeles native, Dr. Lu developed an early interest in how cultural, societal, and systemic influences shape emotional well-being. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Duke University with a degree in Neuroscience and minors in Medical Sociology and Chemistry.

Dr. Lu earned her medical degree from the University of California, Irvine, where she was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society. During this time, she served vulnerable populations through student-run free clinics and provided music therapy in hospice and nursing homes – experiences that solidified her appreciation for the mind-body connection.

She completed her psychiatry residency at USC / Los Angeles General Medical Center, one of the largest public safety-net hospitals on the West Coast. There, she served as Chief Resident of the Integrated Care Services, providing psychiatric care across several primary care clinics, including geriatrics, OBGYN, internal medicine, and pediatrics. She also received specialized training in student mental health on USC’s undergraduate campus.

Dr. Lu treats a broad spectrum of conditions, including mood, anxiety, ADHD, PTSD, OCD, and psychosis, using a personalized combination of psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, and lifestyle interventions. She has a special interest in trauma-informed care, particularly in relational trauma, attachment wounds, and inner child healing.

Her therapeutic approach is integrative and grounded in psychodynamic therapy, for which she pursued advanced training through an additional two-year Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program with the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She also incorporates Internal Family Systems, interpersonal psychotherapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy in her work. Dr. Lu enjoys drawing on mindfulness, spirituality (including Buddhist psychology), and cultural humility to support each person’s unique path to healing.

Jennifer Hichar is a board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner trained to treat mental health disorders in patients of all ages. Her clinical training at Yale School of Nursing took place in both inpatient and outpatient settings with pediatric, adult, and geriatric populations. Jennifer is dedicated to providing patient-centered, evidence-based care within a holistic biopsychosocial approach to treatment.