I liked Islam Ganie, until I didn't. Not that I dislike him. He gave me a good diagnosis and got me on the correct medication when others did not, and so I feel like he helped me in that regard. But he told me early on that he wasn't a therapist and focused on medications. I never felt like I got any therapeutic help from him. Indeed, he told me if I was still having some issues after taking the medications, I should see a psychologist or psychiatrist because he didn't do therapy.
After seeing him via telehealth for a while, sessions began to be mostly him talking disproportionately about his own problems, or him looking up unrelated stuff on his computer, and the last 10 minutes or so of an hour long "session" was a scramble of him asking about my medications and adjusting prescriptions. In the end, I decided to stop taking my medications for a while to gauge how I could do without them (I had started taking them during an intensely disruptive time and wanted to see how I felt once removed from that). I informed Ganie I wanted to stop seeing him for a while. He told me if I stopped I would have to go on a waiting list, and if I wanted to resume at a later date I'd have to pay a $250 fee to be reinstated. At that point I pretty much knew I'd never go back, with that fee added to the other frustrations I already had with him.
If it had stopped there I wouldn't be writing this. But my wife started seeing him as well over her depression and anxiety. She saw him for a good while, and the medications he prescribed helped her. But she had the same experiences I did, which got even more absurd over time. As she put it, she didn't want to pay for a session to see him eat a sandwich and talk about his personal life, and sometimes bring up inappropriate subjects. Her "therapy" ended when Ganie dropped her suddenly and canceled her upcoming appointment. My wife scrambled to find another doctor, hoping to not have a lapse in her medications. She did find another therapist, who asked about having her records transferred so they would know more about what her care had been. Ganie told my wife he would charge $250 to transfer her records to another therapist (he seems to have a thing for that $250) - it's legal to charge a reasonable fee for copying records, but I don't think anyone would call $250 reasonable.
Anyway, I wish Islam Ganie no ill will. But after seeing him for so long and now seeing a therapist through whom I resumed my medications, the contrast between the two has been refreshing and sobering. For the most part, I view my experiences with Ganie as possibly just a clash of personalities. I could say more, but I won't. In the end, were it not for that $250 "reinstatement fee" I might have gone back to him, frustrations or no, when I decided to resume my meds. So make of all this what you will. I'm sure he can suit your needs, for the most part, and I'm not trying to trash him. But my wife and I were both shocked when he dropped her so suddenly. I found that highly unprofessional. And perhaps revealing. read more