Westside Behavioral Care

"Went in for an appointment with my hubby. She was late (from lunch) and unprepared for our session. She hardly asked any questions about us or our background. Instead she spent 75% of the session talking about herself, her husband, and her other clients. Several times she interrupted us while we were talking in order to talk about herself. For me, my marriage is my most important relationship, in terms of the effort I put forward to maintain it. I felt as though her approach to marriage counseling was lazy, at best, and incredibly careless. She was all over the place throwing out cookie-cutter solutions to problems she didn’t fully understand, because of course she wasn’t really listening to either of us. She appeared unstable. I left our appointment feeling dismissed and frustrated. I would not recommend Ms. Shinbaum for any counseling needs."

"Spoke with Valerie on thurs June 9th. Looking for therapist. She was impatient, rude, disrespectful, refuse to listen.She wanted explanation why I failed to listen to her previous voice mail. I tried too explain, reason and apologize for my mistake. She continued to rant and rave about voice mail. I was not able to express what I contacted her for. Hung up on me and never return call. I left message thinking I , disconnected her. Never received follow up call. It's scary the mental health community has hostile providers. At least she indicated not the one. I'm happy appointment never occurred. I wrote earlier review. Not sure it transmitted."

"I saw Ms. Shinbaum about 5 years ago. I only saw her for 3 sessions. With each successive appointment, I felt my self worth decline. I thought that maybe we just had a clash of personality, because the next therapist that I saw helped me immensely. I am saddened, but not surprised, that others had similar negative experiences with her. My experience with her taught me that some people do more harm than good."

"She only got one Star so I could write a review. Literally one of the worst experiences I've had. She didn't listen to a single thing I said. I brought up multiple things I wanted help with and she shut me down immediately and told me I was too young to know anything (I'm 20 btw). We spent more time talking about HER OTHER CLIENTS AND THEIR PROBLEMS and the fact that her husband has been married 4 other times and he worked at Safeway and now works for sprouts than we did my own needs. I will NEVER recommend her to anyone."

"Barely listened, tried to shunt me off to group therapy after the first 20 minutes of our visit. I had visible self-harm scars on my arm and she didn't even ask about them. Showed more interest in my money than my problems."