Dr. Manisha Punwani is a Board Certified Adult Psychiatrist and Board Certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. She was born in Mumbai, India, and was interested in the connection between the mind and body from an early age. She went into medical school with the ambition of becoming a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Her dream was to combine medical, holistic, complementary, spiritual, and integrative sciences with psychiatry. She believes that the child and family must be treated as a whole.
Dr. Punwani graduated from Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, under Mangalore University in India. She came to New York in 1998 and completed a Residency in Adult Psychiatry Program from 2000- 2003 at Brookdale University Hospital, an institution affiliated with SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. In New York, she was involved on the Ethics Committee and actively participated in the New York Member-In-Training Committee. She was selected as the Member-In-Training Representative from New York in the American Medical Association Resident Fellow section and won the William Sorum Award for her work with residents, students, and the community. It was around this time that she developed a strong interest in
Buddhist and Zen forms of therapy
She went to Massachusetts in 2003 to pursue a Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine. She trained in CBT, ERP and trained in Narrative Family Therapy at the Family Institute of Cambridge. She won the Paul F. Briscolli Award for her research on the ‘Impact of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising on patients in Outpatient Psychiatric Clinics.’After her fellowship in 2005, she worked with the underserved population in Maine for two years. She worked to develop the Inpatient Unit for Children and Adolescents using the Collaborative ProblemSolving approach. Her efforts won her praise and recognition.
She moved to Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU) in 2007, where she served as Unit Director at the Juvenile Forensic Unit. She was promoted to Associate Director, Adult Psychiatry Training Program in 2008 and then to Director, Adult Psychiatry Training Program in 2009. This was her full-time job until August 2012. While at SIU, she also developed a Family Forensic clinic, an Autism clinic and saw her patients, mostly practicing CBT and ERP in Children and Adolescents with Anxiety. She was awarded Faculty of the Year in 2009 and Psychotherapy Mentor of the Year in 2012.
Dr. Punwani moved to San Francisco in 2012. She served as an Associate Professor and Fellowship Training Director for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Training Program at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. Her clinical experience focused on running a Child and Adolescent Anxiety and OCD clinic. She saw patients in her faculty practice with diagnosis of anxiety disorders, OCD, and children and young adults with Autism spectrum disorders
She won the Junior Faculty Award in 2012 from the Association of Academic Psychiatry. Since 2013, she has successfully developed and continues to dedicate her efforts to expanding her Integrative Psychiatry practice, which specializes in the treatment of Anxiety Disorders, OCD, and Autism. She also practices Telepsychiatry to provide her established clients with the flexibility of continuity of care. She has extensive experience in working with twice-exceptional children who are intellectually gifted but struggle with emotional challenges, ADHD, or learning disabilities.
She has been rated one of the Top 3 Psychiatrists for three consecutive years in San Francisco. She has dedicated her career path to the practice of Integrative Pediatric and Adolescent Mental Health with a special focus on anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorders, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorders. It is her goal and dream to establish a Mind Body Pediatric Wellness Center in Mumbai, India.
She uses a developmental, family, and systems-based approach in her clinical care. She is trained in and practices Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Exposure Response Prevention therapy, Psychodynamic psychotherapy, Parent Behavioral Management Training, and Narrative Family therapy. Dr. Punwani has multiple presentations, workshops, and seven publications to her name, which can be found on PubMed. She has developed two research projects entitled ‘Assessing grief in families whose children are diagnosed with mental illness’ and ‘Impact of Consumer Advertising on Parents who have children diagnosed with Mental illness.’ She is an animal lover and has three cats and a dog, which she has rescued and adopted. She loves to practice meditation, read, travel, and spend time with family and friends. She can be contacted through her webpage manishapunwanimd. com.
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