Andrew S. Lustbader, M.D., FAAP is a triple-board certified physician in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, General Psychiatry, and Pediatrics, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.  After graduating from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Dr. Lustbader trained at the Yale University School of Medicine and completed residency training in pediatrics, general psychiatry, and child and adolescent psychiatry.  He has been a practicing physician in Connecticut since 1991.  

Dr. Lustbader is an Associate Clinical Professor at the Yale University School of Medicine. He also serves on the clinical faculty in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale-New Haven Hospital.  For over two decades, Dr. Lustbader has founded and directed a multidisciplinary mental health private practice group in Westport, Connecticut – The Therapeutic Center for Children and Families – dedicated to helping people of all ages develop resiliency, promote social- emotional development, and improve the quality of and find meaning in their lives. Dr. Lustbader has expertise in evaluating and treating children, adolescents, adults, and families, who have emotional, relational, parenting, and psychiatric issues. Some of his areas of specialty include anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, ASD, school avoidance, emotional dysregulation, bipolar disorder, and Covid-related mental health issues, using different forms of psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology when needed. He collaborates with other mental health, school-based, and primary care providers, and is currently the psychiatric consultant to the Greenwich school system.

Dr. Lustbader is also the Medical Director of the Prospects Extended Day Treatment Program at the Mid-Fairfield Community Care Center in Norwalk, Connecticut.  The Clinic assists children with mental health issues – without regard for financial need – with prevention programs, emergency assessments, and pre/post hospital intensive programs, as well as many other forms of therapy.
 

As one of the Directors of the Psychopharmacology Clinic at the Yale Child Study Center, Dr. Lustbader supervised a multidisciplinary team of child and adolescent psychiatrists, pediatricians, and nurse practitioners in training, in the science and practice of comprehensive evaluation, and non-pharmacological and pharmacological forms of mental health treatment. He currently supervises child psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners.

Dr. Lustbader has given many seminars to mental health, school-based, and primary care providers, as well as community-based organizations regarding psychopharmacology, psychiatric evaluation and treatment, treatment of physical and psychiatric chronic illnesses (including anxiety and trauma, depression, bipolar disorder, and ADHD), parenting and divorce issues, suicide prevention, and mental health issues related to Covid. In addition, he provides executive coaching for the leaders of major corporations.

Dr. Lustbader serves on the board of trustees of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, one of the foremost psychiatric hospitals in the country. He is also one of the founding members of a local, value-based, private high school in Connecticut.

He serves as a member of a national psychiatric think tank, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP), and is a member of the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Caucus of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Dr. Lustbader has received a national award from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in honor of his collaborative efforts to increase children’s access to quality mental health care. He serves on the Healthcare Access and Economics Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). The committee is dedicated to improving the quality of health care for American children – with a special emphasis on alleviating the crises in children’s mental health care delivery. In addition, at the request of the Office of the Child Advocate in the state of Connecticut, in January of 2010, he chaired a task force of pediatricians and mental health providers which released a Blueprint for a Mental Health System in CT that would provide quality mental health care for all children in need.  In 2013, the Joint Leadership Task Force was instrumental in helping pass some of the childrens mental health legislation as a result of the crisis in Newtown. One of those initiatives was the creation of the ACCESS Mental Health program, which extends immediate assistance to pediatricians and other primary care providers who have mental health concerns about their patients. He serves as the Associate Director of the Yale Hub of clinicians who provide ready clinical support to these primary care providers for the families in their practices who have mental health needs.