Background
Dr. Sepah graduated from UCLA with a BA in Political Science, magna cum laude, and went to work as a journalist, becoming the Assistant Editor of Ms. Magazine, where she wrote the health column sparking her interest in medicine.
After completing a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program, she attended Tulane School of Medicine.
She received her Doctor of Medicine degree in 2006, with a lifetime induction in the Arnold P. Gold Humanism in Medicine Foundation. Dr. Sepah completed her internship in family medicine at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center and then completed a psychiatry residency at LAC+USC Medical Center, where she served as Chief Resident in her fourth year. She received the 2012 PER Foundation’s Excellence in Research Award for original research on physician burnout syndrome among residents and faculty in the pediatric and psychiatry departments at LAC + USC. She was also the recipient of the Resident Research Award and Resident Mentorship award by her department.
Chief Psychiatrist
Post-residency, Dr. Sepah has worked extensively in correctional medicine, including serving as the Chief Psychiatrist at the California Department of Corrections’s CIW facility in Corona, CA. She was the first female Chief Psychiatrist at that prison. As the Chief Psychiatrist, she helped launch one of the state’s first MAT programs in the history of CDCR. Dr. Sepah developed a psychiatry clerkship for Western School of Medicine students on site, which is still active and flourishing. Under her direction, CIW’s 45-bed inpatient hospital received re-accreditation by the Joint Commission.
dTMS Pasadena
Dr. Sepah now runs her own interventional psychiatry clinic, which focuses on deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (dTMS), esketamine, MAT, reproductive psychiatry, neuropsychiatric disorders (TBI, dementia), and early diagnosis schizophrenia. She incorporates teaching into private practice as PGY-3 FP residents from PIH Downey Hospital rotate at her clinic to complete their four-week psychiatry/substance abuse clerkships. She is an Adjunct Clinical Professor at Western School of Medicine and Assistant Clinical Professor at USC Keck School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. In 2021, she was inducted into the 74th edition of Who’s Who in America.
Advocacy
The management of systems and improvement of healthcare models, particularly in the area of access, is of particular interest to Dr. Sepah, and the duties of Medical Director for Psychiatry at Imperial Health Holdings Medical Group & Health Plan allows her better involvement in healthcare management.
She also serves on the Access to Care Committee and the Committee for Diversity at the APA’s Southern California chapter. As an HIV psychiatrist, She is also part of the LA County AIDS Consortium. In addition to her day-to-day activities, she continues to write about the practice of medicine, patient advocacy, and improving access to care.
She contributed to one of the state’s largest whistleblower acts, “the Golding Report,” and she is quoted in Patients at Risk: The Rise of the Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant in Healthcare. You will also see Dr. Sepah in the documentary, Not Carol, a film about Carol Coronado and postpartum depression. She also provides mentorship and support to her colleagues through the online community, Physician to Physician: Healing the Practice of Medicine a group she founded with Dr. Shatzmiller in 2017 after the suicide of one of her medical school classmates that now has over 3.5k physicians.
Interviews and Media
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