TREATING PATIENTS

Dr. Adhia’s Clinical Experience in Patient Care as a Treating Psychiatrist

Dr. Adhia’ s clinical experience as a physician parallels the wide variety of cases he has completed as an expert witness and Independent Medical Examiner.

Neuropsychiatry

Currently, Dr. Adhia is a neuropsychiatrist at TIRR Memorial Herman. This is a world-renowned center for neurorehabilitation for those with brain injury, stroke, spinal cord injuries, and other disorders. His focus is treating the psychiatric and neurocognitive complications of such injuries.

Avenue 360

Dr. Adhia joined Avenue 360 Health and Wellness, a clinic that provides healthcare to under-served populations in the Houston area. Dr. Adhia treats psychiatric patients.

Psychiatric Hospital Treatment

Dr. Adhia began his medical career in an acute care unit at Harris County Psychiatric Center where he stabilized those with

Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship

Dr. Adhia left the Harris County hospital to pursue a Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship in Portland, Oregon.

During the Fellowship, he treated patients in jail, prison and provided ACT (Assertive Community Treatment). With the ACT team, he had the opportunity to treat patients in their homes.

After his Fellowship, Dr. Adhia worked in a State Supported Living Center which housed residents with severe IDD (Intellectual Developmental Disorders; formerly known as Mental Retardation) and Autism.  Some of his patients were non-verbal and had rare genetic disorders.

Now trained as a Forensic Psychiatrist, Dr. Adhia rejoined Harris County Psychiatric Center to work in the Competency Restoration Unit to treat individuals who have been adjudicated incompetent to stand trial.

Many of the patients suffered from severe psychosis or neurocognitive disorders. Some of the patients feigned mental illness and were determined to be Malingering.

Supermax Prison and Death Row Inmates

Dr. Adhia then accepted a position at the Jester 4 Unit with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on the high-security pod. Jester 4 is one of three psychiatric prison hospitals in Texas.

His patients included those on Death Row and Administrative Segregation (now known as Restrictive Housing and referred to colloquially as “being in isolation”). Some of the patients had psychotic disorders.

His correctional experience with violent offenders on death row has proven relevant in some of the capital cases on which he has worked in private forensic practice, including homicides.

Personality Disorders and Impulse Disorders

Many offenders had Impulse Disorders, severe Personality Disorders such as Anti-Social Personality Disorder and some demonstrated Self-Injurious Behavior (SIB). Some of the offenders were admitted as they were Suicidal or recently engaged in violent or homicidal behaviors. While working on the Jester 4 unit, Dr. Adhia provided outpatient telepsychiatry services to the notorious death row in the “Supermax” Polunsky Unit. Polunsky was memorialized in novels by John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell, in part because of its reputation for holding some of the most dangerous, and high-profile, criminals awaiting execution.

Medical Director of a Private Psychiatric Clinic

Dr. Adhia served as Medical Director of an outpatient psychiatric clinic in 2018, transitioning from caring for prisoners to a private clinic in suburban Houston which engaged him in a new way. He led the clinic and supervised psychiatric nurse practitioners. There he treated mood disorders, anxiety disorders, PTSD and ADHD. In addition, he treated those with Substance Use Disorders such as addiction to Heroin and other Opioids, Alcohol, Cannabis, prescription drugs like Xanax, Methamphetamine, Cocaine and synthetics such as “spice” (aka Kush or synthetic cannabinoids, and “bath salts”.) He provided Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) with buprenorphine (aka Suboxone) and naltrexone. He also referred alcoholics for detox. In 2019, he left the Clinic and pursued Board-Certification in Brain Injury Medicine and a shift in clinical practice.

Brain Injury Medicine

In 2019 Dr. Adhia obtained Board-Certification in Brain Injury Medicine, a longtime area of interest.

Academic Experience Teaching  Medical Students and Residents About Treating Psychiatric Conditions

Dr. Adhia enjoys teaching and his students have included lawyers, medical students, and residents. During his Fellowship, Dr. Adhia taught law students about psychiatry. When he rejoined the University of Texas Health as the Assistant Professor of Psychiatry on the Competency Restoration Unit, he taught and supervised medical students and psychiatry residents.

Dr. Adhia was affiliated with UTMB and taught medical students in correctional psychiatry while he was working in corrections.

In his current work at TIRR, in addition to treating patients, Dr. Adhia works closely with residents teaching physicians in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R). TIRR Memorial Hermann is a teaching hospital for UT Health where Dr. Adhia is currently on the faculty as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry.