Hi there! Thank you for visiting my web site.  Do you realize that you have just taken a very difficult step?  I’m going to make an assumption.  (I know. I always tell my patients to never assume.)  I’m going to assume that you are at least toying with the idea of asking for help.

That’s a scary proposition!  Does it seem to you that asking for help is a sign of weakness?  Do you think that you should be able to handle your problems on your own?  Perhaps you think that you are making too much out of your issues?

If you have these thoughts, you are not alone.  So many of my patients over the years have told me that these ideas have greatly delayed them from getting help.  More on that later.

Let me introduce myself to you.  My name is Joe Donnellan.  I graduated New Jersey Medical School in Newark in 1986 and completed my psychiatric residency there in 1990.  I have been a board-certified psychiatrist for 33 years.

My first job was at the Carrier Foundation, in central Jersey, as a general staff psychiatrist.  At that time, Carrier was the third largest private psychiatric hospital in the country.  Being a tertiary referral center, during my three years there, there wasn’t much that I didn’t see.

I then left Carrier to start a private practice.  I also joined the medical staff of Robert Wood Johnson Somerset (formerly, Somerset Medical Center) in 1993.  First I treated patients on the General Psychiatric Unit and over that first year, I transitioned to working on their Eating Disorders Unit.

I was the Medical Director of the Eating Disorders Unit for 22 years and served as Chief of Psychiatry at the hospital from 1999 to 2018.

I had the best of both worlds.  The first half of my day, I enjoyed the excitement of the hospital.  When I walked onto the Eating Disorders Unit each morning, I truly never knew what to expect.  Then the second half of my day (and first half of my night), I would go to my private office in Hillsborough, which was somewhat more predictable.