This review is in reference to my experience working with Timothy Cooper and Joel Schwartz…read more
The primary reason I decided to work with TSC was because, during my initial intake call, I felt like Timothy understood how disappointing and damaging my previous experiences with past medical and mental health professionals had been. I felt validated and reassured that this experience with TSC would be different. I finally felt like relief -- and support with serious cognitive impairment and neurodivergence challenges -- was just around the corner. Unfortunately, I couldn't have been more wrong.
Working with Timothy quickly became very frustrating due to: 1) his lack of responsiveness, where he'd go weeks/months without providing me with an update on next steps, 2) his impatient tone when conducting the assessment, 3) and his sheer lack of professionalism. For example, he conducted my assessment in a public environment where others could see/hear me, and shared about his personal life via text as the reason for delays in our progress.
Eventually, it got so difficult to work with Timothy that I requested that my individual therapist step in to complete the assessment with me. After nine painful months, I received my final report, and I requested that Joel Schwartz, the head psychologist at TSC, be the one to review the report with me. Joel was also unresponsive and unprofessional, expressing minimal regret or concern about (nor responsibility for how negative of an experience I was having with his practice. In our first meeting, he showed up unprepared and unfamiliar with my case, only to skim my report and tell me that it appeared incomplete. We had to meet again in order for him to finish up my report appropriately, but he was late to our appointment, then took weeks to provide updates. I experienced his bedside manner to be quite callous and lacking basic levels of empathy.
The report itself contained basic inaccuracies that didn't resonate with what I'd shared during the assessment process. For example, despite me repeatedly telling Joel that my symptoms had emerged prior to ever having Covid-19, the report that he ultimately delivered leaned heavily on a diagnosis of long Covid-19 as one of the main causes of some of my symptoms. He also delivered my report without offering to explain its contents to me; it's a dense document written for a practitioner audience, which means that without guidance from Joel or another practitioner, it's very difficult for me to understand.
All in, it took TSC 360 days to conduct, complete, and deliver my assessment, which was nine months longer than the original timeline I was given, a time during which I was strung along, re-traumatized, and ultimately, harmed instead of helped.
It's hard to explain to those who don't struggle with mental illness how deeply painful it is to get handled so irresponsibly by those to whom you're paying large amounts of money for expertise and support with mental illness. The hopelessness and despair that I felt at the beginning of this journey were only compounded by my experience with TSC, and I now feel worse about my condition than when I started. I felt repeatedly dropped and hung out to dry throughout my time with TSC and I would strongly discourage anyone seeking mental health support from working with Timothy or Joel.