Dorothy Kalyanapu, MD

Dr. Dorothy Kalyanapu, MD is an Adult and Child/Adolescent Psychiatrist and founder of Rethink Psychiatry serving the Baltimore and DC Metro areas. She uses a holistic, comprehensive approach to psychiatry which helps a wide array of complex patients, especially those struggling with autism spectrum disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit disorder (ADD/ADHD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and traumatic brain injuries (TBI).

Dr. Kalyanapu began her pursuit of a medical career at age 16 years old when she was accepted into an Accelerated Six-Year Medical Program with Pennsylvania State University and Sidney Kimmel Medical College of the Thomas Jefferson University. She earned the U.S. Army Health Professionals Scholarship Program for medical school and received the Honorable Mention for Baldwin L. Keyes Prize in Psychiatry. After graduation, she completed her general adult psychiatry residency program at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. During her service there, she worked extensively with veterans, active duty service members, and military family members.

This patient population was extremely diverse, including highly successful patients with mild depression and anxiety, a large number of “first break” cases of psychotic illness, and homeless veterans struggling with a lifetime of chronic mental illness and disability.

Dr. Kalyanapu also went on to complete a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at Tripler Army Medical Center, where she was a part of the Child Study Group, a unique team of multidisciplinary providers conducting extensive child psychiatry evaluations of children as young as 18 months old. During her fellowship in Hawaii, Dr. Kalyanapu also worked closely with children and adolescents being treated as inpatients, both for acute hospitalization and residential care, with opportunities to treat suburban populations alongside children from the rural and isolated outer islands of Hawaii.

As an active duty Army psychiatrist, Dr. Kalyanapu later gained even more experience working with soldiers and military families. She served as Chief of Child/Adolescent Psychiatry at Ft. Stewart, Georgia, before being deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While in Iraq, she led a Combat Stress Control team in Camp Victory, Baghdad, involved in assessing, treating, and preventing mental health issues in theater.

After leaving the Army, Dr. Kalyanapu worked at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Ellicott City, MD, where she treated adults and adolescents with substance abuse, psychotic disorders, bipolar illness, and other mood/anxiety disorders. Frustrated with the “revolving door” of inpatient treatment and with the general lack of innovation in traditional psychiatry, she then started to investigate alternative forms of therapy.

This ultimately led her to take a position at the Amen Clinic in Reston, VA, where she learned to use novel technologies, such as brain SPECT imaging, to more accurately evaluate and treat patients. Utilizing medical literature, online webinars, medical conferences, and extensive consultation with colleagues from other disciplines, she greatly expanded her knowledge of brain physiology, biochemistry, and genetics to more comprehensively treat patients.

In addition to traditional psychotropic medications, she learned to address diet and nutrition, exercise, the gut-brain connection, hormonal imbalances, environmental toxicity, chronic infections (such as tick-borne illnesses), traumatic brain injuries, herbal supplements, and a wide array of both ancient and modern alternative therapies.

In 2018 Dr. Kalyanapu established Rethink Psychiatry, LLC to continue her vision of using diet, exercise, nutritional supplements, and other functional medicine techniques to address psychiatric conditions. She presently combines both traditional psychopharmacology and natural therapies into a comprehensive treatment plan that is highly individualized for each patient.

While she specializes in child psychiatry, Dr. Kalyanapu also works with patients of all ages struggling with mood and anxiety issues, attention-deficit disorder, learning disorders, autism spectrum disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, traumatic brain injuries, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She also enjoys complex cases that defy traditional classification and have been refractory to prior treatments.

Dr. Kalyanapu believes that treating the underlying causes of a patient’s neuropsychiatric condition provides the best outcome and greatest opportunities for optimal health, not just absence of disease.

Today, Dr. Kalyanapu lives with her husband and two cats near Baltimore, MD, and enjoys a wide range of artistic, scientific, and recreational hobbies.