Neurodiversity, across the lifespan.
ADHD, autism, OCD, and tic disorders are frequently missed, frequently over-diagnosed, frequently overlapping and frequently mistaken for one another. Getting the diagnosis right is not a formality; it determines whether treatment works.
Conditions addressed
Dr. Yu's training as a child and adolescent psychiatrist gives her specific expertise in conditions that typically begin early in life and are increasingly recognized in adults who went undiagnosed for decades.
- ADHD: inattentive, hyperactive, and combined presentations, in children and in adults.
- Autism spectrum disorder: including presentations that were masked or missed in childhood.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder: including intrusive thoughts that patients have never said out loud.
- Tic disorders, including Tourette's.
- Co-occurring conditions: the anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder and demoralization that commonly accompany years of undiagnosed neurodevelopmental difference.
Diagnosed late, or never.
Many adults arrive having compensated for years: capable, often high-achieving, and privately exhausted by how much effort ordinary functioning requires. Some suspected something for a long time. Some only started wondering after a child was evaluated.
A careful adult evaluation takes developmental history seriously rather than screening from a symptom checklist, and distinguishes ADHD from anxiety, depression, trauma, sleep deprivation, and the ordinary cognitive cost of an overloaded life.
Getting it right the first time.
For young people, evaluation draws on parents, the young person, standardized questionnaires, school information, and direct observation. The goal is a picture specific enough to act on, including strengths and not only deficits.
That picture also supports the practical work: school accommodations, IEP and 504 conversations, and helping parents understand what their child can and cannot yet do on their own.
What happens after the diagnosis.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is the treatment with the strongest evidence base for OCD, and Dr. Yu provides it directly. Medication is often a useful adjunct, and the two together typically outperform either alone.
ADHD
Treatment usually combines medication management with practical executive-function support: the systems, structures, and skills that make an attention difference less costly day to day. Medication choices are made carefully, monitored with standardized measures, and adjusted based on what the data show.
Patients prescribed controlled substances, including stimulant medications, are required to attend at least one in-person evaluation.
Autism spectrum disorder
There is no medication that treats autism itself. What psychiatry can address is the co-occurring anxiety, depression, irritability, and sleep difficulty that often make daily life harder, alongside helping families and adults understand how autism symptoms present and how to build environments that fit how they actually work.
Executive function support
For students, working adults, and parents managing a household, the gap between knowing what to do and doing it is often the real presenting problem. This is treated as clinical material, not a character flaw.
Currently accepting new patients.
In person in Noe Valley, or by telehealth anywhere in California.