Dr. Terrence Stephen Early, MD

Expert Publications

• The state of electroconvulsive therapy in Texas. Part I: reported data on 41,660 ECT treatments in 5971 patients.
• The state of electroconvulsive therapy in Texas. Part 2: contact with physicians, hospitals, medical liability insurance companies, and manufacturers of stimulus generating equipment.
• Low dose, lack of power not a test of sevoflurane burst suppression therapy.
• Clinical observation of assessment using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). An analysis of the CIDI Field Trials--Wave II at the St Louis site.
• Comparison of Composite International Diagnostic Interview and clinical DSM-III-R criteria checklist diagnoses.
• Asymmetric metabolism over basal ganglia in catatonia.
• Asymmetries in hemispheric control of attention in schizophrenia.
• Subcortical dopamine and serotonin turnover during acute and subchronic administration of typical and atypical neuroleptics.
• Visual attention in obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• The ICD-10 symptom checklist: a companion to the ICD-10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders.
• Lateralized attentional abnormality in schizophrenia is correlated with severity of symptoms.
• Temporal lobe perfusion asymmetries in schizophrenia.
• SPECT image analysis using statistical parametric mapping: comparison of technetium-99m-HMPAO and technetium-99m-ECD.

Media Releases

Get to know Psychiatrist Dr. Terrence Stephen Early, who serves patients in Santa Barbara, California.

A respected psychiatrist, Dr. Early is the Medical Director of Interventional Psychiatry Associates in Santa Barbara, California. His expertise allows the application of individualized psychiatry, psychopharmacology, and innovative psychotherapy to treat a variety of mental health illnesses.

His focus is to help individuals heal, energize, and become aware of their inner strengths. He achieves this by providing a neutral safe space, listening to one’s concerns, and customizing a treatment plan. 

The goal of Interventional Psychiatry Associates is to perform a thorough physical and mental health evaluation in order to determine a treatment plan which includes the use of psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, and ketamine therapy to treat illnesses such as treatment resistant depression, pain, anxiety or to aid in palliative care.

After completing medical school at the Duke University School of Medicine and a residency in psychiatry at Washington University, Dr. Early joined the faculty at Washington University and initially did research in brain imaging and cognitive studies. In 1993, he moved to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where he became interested in developing novel treatments for refractory psychiatric illness. 

Beginning in 1999, he received grants from Narsad and the Stanley Foundation to compare high dose sevoflurane to electroconvulsive therapy for treatment resistant mood disorders. This was a replication of a finding reported by Dr. Gerhard Langer using isoflurane, which has recently been replicated by Dr. Howard Weeks and his collaborators at the University of Utah using isoflurane and propofol. 

Like these investigators, Dr. Early found it impossible to disseminate this useful treatment, which is as effective as ECT but does not cause any cognitive side effects. He became interested in the science behind the diffusion of innovation, and was primed to explore ketamine when the initial results were published. In 2007, he collaborated with a pain specialist at Baylor, studying ketamine therapy in patients with pain and psychiatric illness and saw first hand the robust effects of this treatment. He also encountered the resistance that is uniformly experienced by investigators attempting to introduce ketamine into institutional settings, and realized that the main obstacles to patients accessing this treatment were financial and regulatory.

His experience with sevoflurane made it clear that even very safe, effective treatments may not become available if they do not get past these obstacles. Dr. Early decided to leave academia and attempt to introduce ketamine into routine psychiatric practice. He moved to Santa Barbara and in 2009, was the first psychiatrist to offer subanesthetic ketamine in a psychiatric private practice in an affordable, safe, and effective manner in this state. 

Helping patients in every step of their journey, the doctor is board-certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN). The ABPN is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to serving the professions of psychiatry and neurology.

A board member of the Ketamine Research Foundation, Dr. Early has mentored many physicians in the use of outpatient ketamine.

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behavior, cognition, and perceptions. Psychiatrists evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. They conduct thorough psychiatric evaluations, develop treatment plans, prescribe medication, and evaluate treatment results.

In honor of his clinical expertise, Dr. Early is the recipient of Patients’ Choice Award (2014, 2015, 2016), Compassionate Doctor Recognition (2015), and On-Time Doctor Award (2015, 2016).

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