Meet Dr. Sirin Ozdemir

I’m a double board-certified child, adolescent & adult psychiatrist. I trained in autism at Massachusetts General Hospital, completed my child & adolescent fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock as Chief Fellow, and served as Chief Resident at St. Elizabeth’s in Boston, where I received an Excellence in Teaching Award. Across roughly fifteen years in psychiatry, in academic medical centers, community health, and hospital practice, one conviction has only deepened: there is no standard patient.

I believe every child arrives with a potential that belongs only to them, and that growing into that self isn’t a privilege; it’s a basic need, as real as safety and nutrition. Psychiatry is where I get to protect it. That belief applies to everyone who comes to me: the teenager whose anxiety has taken over the school year, the adult who has tried several medications and never felt understood, the child whose difficulty with attention is being read as character.

Autism is where I trained most deeply, and where this belief is tested hardest. Autistic children and adults are so often asked to explain themselves in a language that isn’t theirs. My fellowship training in autism at Mass General taught me how much changes when a doctor stops trying to correct the person in front of them and starts trying to understand them. That lesson shapes how I sit with every patient, autistic or not.

The word I keep coming back to is attuned: tuning in to what this particular child or adult is actually experiencing and what they actually need, and building the treatment around that, not around a diagnosis code. Attuna comes from attunement: the act of tuning in to another person’s inner state.

Being a physician also means paying attention to the body, not only the mind. Sleep, growth and nutrition, and how the body is working overall shape mood, attention and behavior more than people expect. I’d rather understand what’s feeding a symptom before I add anything to treat it. A plan that ignores the rest of someone’s health isn’t a complete plan.