Downey, California
Psychiatric Care for Downey
Eleven miles down the 710, with a Metro rail station of its own that is named for somewhere else. Psychiatric care in person in Long Beach or by secure video.
In short
Psychiatric care for Downey
Downey is about eleven miles north of our psychiatric office, roughly twenty-two minutes down the 710. About 111,000 people live there, and the city has a Metro rail station of its own. We provide psychiatric evaluation, diagnosis and ongoing medication management in person on Long Beach Boulevard, or by secure video across California.
- Our office
- 3646 Long Beach Blvd # 205, Long Beach, CA 90807
- Hours
- Mon–Fri · 8 AM–6 PM (Pacific)
- Phone
- (818) 286-3862
Telehealth available across California, with new locations coming to Northern California.
What we do
Psychiatric care for Downey patients
We are a psychiatric practice, not a therapy group and not a clinic directory. That means diagnosis, medication, and someone who keeps track of how you are actually doing over time.
Psychiatry Services
Comprehensive psychiatric care — diagnosis, treatment planning, and ongoing management led by a board-certified provider.
Medication Management
Careful prescribing, monitoring, and adjustment of psychiatric medications to maximize benefit and minimize side effects.
Psychiatric Evaluation
A thorough first assessment to understand your history and symptoms and build an accurate diagnosis and plan.
What a first visit looks like
A full psychiatric evaluation runs about an hour. We go through what brought you in, your history, what you have tried before and how it went, physical health and medications, and what you want to be different. You leave with a working diagnosis where one is clear, a plan, and a follow-up booked — not a referral to somewhere else.
Follow-ups are shorter, usually every few weeks at first and further apart once things are steady. Medication changes are made deliberately, one at a time, so it stays possible to tell what is working.
In person or by video, from Downey
Both are real options and the clinical care is the same. Video visits are secure and available anywhere in California, which for most people makes the first appointment in person and the routine follow-ups from home or on a work break.
If getting here is the thing standing between you and treatment, take the video visit rather than skipping the care. That is what it is for.
Care is provided by our psychiatric team — Irine Achuamang, MSN, PMHNP-BC and Austina Cho, MD.
Paying for care
Will we be covered, or self-pay?
Usually, yes. We are in network with 19 commercial carriers, including Aetna, Anthem, Beacon Health Options, Carelon, Cigna and others — you can check your own plan below before booking anything. That list includes TRICARE and TriWest, so service members, veterans and military families are billed like anyone else here.
We do not currently take Medi-Cal managed care. If that is your coverage, we are a self-pay option rather than a covered visit, and it is better to know that now than at the front desk. Self-pay is $250 for a 60-minute initial psychiatric evaluation and $150 for a 30-minute follow-up visit, and there is a sliding scale — please ask.
What that looks like in Downey
Local coverage data, so you can see roughly where you fall before you call:
- Among Downey adults aged 19 to 64, 64.0 percent hold commercial insurance — employer plans plus those bought directly. source
- In the same age band 18.9 percent of Downey residents rely on Medi-Cal or another means-tested public program and 9.7 percent have no coverage. source
- Downey has a population of 110,939 and a median household income of $90,699. source
In-network with your insurance
We're in-network with most major plans, so care stays affordable. Not sure about yours? Verify your coverage in about a minute — or we'll gladly check it for you.
No card to hand? Just leave your name and number — tick “look it up for me” and we'll do the checking. Self-pay & sliding-scale options are also available.
Plans we accept
Paying out of pocket?
Self-pay ratesClear, upfront self-pay rates — no surprises, no fine print. You’ll know the cost before your first visit.
Initial psychiatric evaluation
$250/ 1 hour
Follow-up visit
$150/ 30 min
Sliding-scale options are available — just ask.
About visiting us from Downey
Downey has about a hundred and eleven thousand residents, which in plain terms means a great many people here are living with an untreated psychiatric condition and have not yet done anything about it. What we provide is the unglamorous middle of that problem: a proper evaluation, a diagnosis when the picture supports one, medication chosen carefully and then genuinely monitored, and follow-up that changes course rather than repeating itself. Depression, PTSD and treatment-resistant depression are the bulk of what we see from this direction.
Treatment-resistant is worth a sentence of its own, because the phrase frightens people more than it should. It usually means two adequate trials of medication at an adequate dose for an adequate length of time have not produced a good enough response — and the commonest reason someone carries that label is that one of those three conditions was never actually met. Doses were left too low, or a medication was abandoned at three weeks, or nobody reviewed it. A careful re-examination of the history is often the most useful thing we do at a first appointment.
Coverage here sits in the middle. Around two thirds of working-age residents hold commercial insurance of the kind we bill. Close to one in five is on Medi-Cal or a similar means-tested programme and roughly one in ten has no coverage at all — across a city this size that is something like twenty-eight thousand people between them. We do not contract with any Medi-Cal managed-care plan, so for those residents we are a self-pay practice with a sliding scale, and the county help line on (800) 854-7771 is a better first call than we are.
The drive is refreshingly boring: about eleven miles from City Hall, roughly twenty-two minutes, essentially one road the whole way down the 710. Both alternatives add distance without buying anything. Downey also has a Metro rail station inside it, and the station is called Lakewood Blvd — named for the boulevard running through it, while the city of Lakewood seven miles south has none at all. If you have ever tried to meet someone at “the Lakewood station” and ended up eleven miles apart, that is why.
One thing about this place that is not trivia. The Apollo command modules were built here: Vultee Aircraft was the city’s largest wartime employer and by 1941 was producing fifteen percent of all America’s military aircraft, and the plant that became North American Aviation and then Rockwell designed the systems that flew to the moon. Downey did difficult technical work for decades and then watched the industry leave. Towns with that history carry a particular kind of stress — generational, tied up with work and worth, and it tends to present as depression or as drinking rather than as anything anyone would call a mental health problem out loud.
Nobody needs a lecture about that. But if it is familiar, an evaluation is twenty-two minutes or a video call away, and it is a far more ordinary thing to do than it sounds. In crisis, call or text 988.
Getting here
Travelling from Downey
Distances and times below are Google's, timed on a weekday at the hour each route note states, in the traffic it labels usual for that route. Allow longer at the peaks each note says were not sampled.
By car
From Downey City Hall the office is 11.3 miles and about 22 minutes straight down I-710 south. Timed on a weekday evening. Morning and afternoon peaks were not sampled.
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The alternatives add distance without saving time — 12.7 miles by Brookshire Avenue onto the 710 at 23 minutes, or 12.8 miles by way of the 105 at 22. Timed on a weekday evening. Morning and afternoon peaks were not sampled.
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By transit
Lakewood Blvd Station on the Metro C Line is inside Downey, despite being named for the boulevard rather than the city it sits in.
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Norwalk Station, the eastern terminus of the same C Line, is two stops further east in the city of Norwalk.
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Long Beach Transit's Routes 21 and 22 run the Downey Avenue corridor south toward Lakewood Station.
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Local
Other resources in Downey
These are listed because they are useful. We have no referral arrangement with any of them.
Downey is served by the Los Angeles County health and mental health systems rather than by a city department of its own.
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The county's mental health help line answers at (800) 854-7771 every hour of every day and can arrange service referrals or a crisis assessment.
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Dialing or texting 988 connects to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline nationwide.
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Related
What we treat from this direction
Frequently asked questions
Is there really a rail station in Downey?
Yes, and the name is the confusing part. Lakewood Blvd Station on the C Line sits inside Downey — it takes its name from the boulevard, not from the city of Lakewood seven miles south, which has no station at all. It is a genuinely confusing piece of naming that catches people out in both directions.
How long is the drive?
About twenty-two minutes for the 11.3 miles, essentially straight down the 710. The alternatives are longer without being faster: going via Brookshire Avenue is 12.7 miles and twenty-three minutes, and looping through the 105 is 12.8 miles for the same twenty-two. The direct run is the right one here.
What coverage do most Downey residents have?
Just under two thirds carry commercial insurance, which is what we contract with. Close to one in five is on Medi-Cal and about one in ten has no coverage — we do not contract with Medi-Cal managed care, so for those residents we are a self-pay practice with a sliding scale you can ask about.
What does treatment-resistant actually mean?
Usually that two adequate medication trials have not produced a good enough response. What matters more is what happens next, because the answer is often sitting in the history: what was tried, at what dose, and for how long. If you have old prescription bottles or a pharmacy printout, bring them. They are far more useful than trying to remember.
Would the county line be a better first call than you?
If your coverage is Medi-Cal, yes. Close to one in five working-age Downey residents is covered that way and we do not contract with any Medi-Cal managed-care plan, so (800) 854-7771 reaches options we cannot match. If you carry commercial insurance, which about two thirds of residents here do, we are the more direct route.
My problem is really about work and money. Is that psychiatric?
The distinction is less useful than it sounds. Downey did difficult technical work for decades and then watched the industry leave, and stress of that kind runs generational and gets tangled up with worth. It tends to surface as low mood or exhaustion rather than as anything anyone would name out loud. Whether the cause is circumstantial does not change whether the sleep, the concentration and the mood are treatable.
Twenty-two minutes, or a video call
Request a time online — a real person confirms every appointment, in person or by secure video across California.