Dr. Eugenio Duarte, PHD

Dr. Duarte, based on my personal experience (along with his other reviews here and elsewhere), seems to have commitment issues regarding his patients. I came to him during a very dangerous time in my life, and during our sessions, he was quite helpful, validating, and knowledgeable. But, he suddenly dropped me as a patient while emphasizing it was for my own good without providing any sort of guidance or referrals to other providers more equipped to handle my problems. His actions left lasting damage on me, and it made it difficult to trust other mental health professionals again (although, thankfully, I’ve had better experiences now). I’ve hesitated to write this review for a long time, but now that I see it’s a pattern with him, I feel obligated to say my piece.

I was in a very dark place when I came to see Dr. Duarte, and he did help me to get through that. He challenged me on certain preconceptions and events, and helped me to think more critically about certain aspects of myself. Once I was through that dark period of time, however, I started to feel hostility and reproach from him. Rather than challenging, our sessions now felt overly critical and demeaning. The last session we had was pretty brutal, with him springing on me that it was our last session together and gaslighting me that he'd been very explicit about that. I think overall he did more good than harm, but the empathetic, supportive therapists I saw afterwards stood in stark contrast to his approach, which seemed towards the end to spill over from constructively critical to somewhat disdainful and negative on a surprisingly personal level, which I've never experienced from a therapist before or since.