Abigail Langan, MD
BY Meredith Knight | photo by Can Ertan
Your mental health impacts every aspect of your life. When you’re struggling with mental-health issues, it can be hard to be the parent, spouse, employee, and friend you want to be. Fortunately, we’re living in a time when it’s increasingly recognized that mental health is as important as physical health.
Dr. Abigail Langan is proud to be at the forefront of this movement toward normalizing and prioritizing mental health. She recognized early in her psychiatry residency how much could be changed if anxiety, depression, ADHD, and other mental-health challenges could be addressed earlier rather than later.
So, while she works with adults, couples, and families, Dr. Langan concentrates much of her practice on children and adolescents. “Early intervention often allows for better management of symptoms, improved quality of life, and greater potential for positive long-term outcomes compared to waiting until issues become more severe and ingrained later in life,” Dr. Langan posited. “Early treatment can help children develop healthy strategies and coping mechanisms to manage their mental-health challenges while they’re still young and still developing.”
Dr. Langan began her career working in hospital settings and, while it helped her gain wide experience, she often felt frustrated by the time constraints placed upon her, especially for complicated cases. She established her own practice in no small part hoping to eliminate those restrictions. “I like knowing my patients and having them know I’m truly listening,” she said. “It’s hard to do that in 15-minute windows.” She prefers to spend a half hour to an hour with a patient and to maintain flexible hours, so children can see her without missing school.
These flexible hours also allow Dr. Langan to be more available to her patients. “I want to be able to see someone when they need to be seen, even if that’s in the evening or on the weekend,” she said. “I generally spend two days per week in the office and see the rest of my patients through telehealth.” She can also accommodate a hybrid model where some counseling is in person and some is through telehealth.
“Initial visits are almost always in person and I need to see patients for medication management,” Dr. Langan said. “Other than that, I try to make counseling an easy fit into their lives.”
Meet Dr. Langan
Abigail Langan graduated from the world-renowned NYU general psychiatry program and has fellowship training in child and adolescent psychiatry from NYU’s Child Study Center. She’s a graduate of Robert Wood Johnson Medical School where she was recognized in the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society for outstanding academic achievements. She completed her undergraduate studies in public health at Johns Hopkins University and earned a master’s in molecular and microbiology and immunology. When not on the job, she’s a proud mom of four who enjoys reading, cooking, traveling, and attending sporting events.
“Early intervention often allows for better management of symptoms, improved quality of life, and greater potential for positive long-term outcomes compared to waiting until issues become more severe and ingrained later in life.”
