Dr. Tutson likes to garden and has a passion for butterfly and hummingbird gardens. She has constructed her garden for nighttime enjoyment and done quite a bit of research on fragrant night-blooming flowers like night-blooming jasmine. She is an excellent cook with a renowned signature dish of gumbo and is often referred to as the Gumbo Queen by family and friends. She enjoys baking yeast bread which she started doing at about twelve years old and become quite good at making up some of her own recipes like crawfish bread. She plans to one day enter The Pillsbury Cook-Off.
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Valerie Tutson, MD
Dr. Tutson is a Board-Certified, Adolescent & Adult Psychiatrist with a focus on depression including young adult-onset depression, anxiety, ADHD, and trauma-related issues.
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More about Valerie Tutson, MD
Growing up seeing her mother work as a nurse, Dr. Valerie Tutson had her calling early on to pursue medicine. She entered medical school with clear intentions of becoming a pediatrician and a long-term goal of working with adolescents with emotional problems. After some soul searching, she found her way to psychiatry as it more closely mirrored her goals of medicine and was a place where she felt she could best make a difference in her patient’s lives. She enjoys hearing the story of someone’s journey and helping them reach a better baseline of functioning either with therapy, psychopharmacology, or other treatments.
Her style is somewhat eclectic in that she approaches each patient individually and meets them where they are, making sure they feel valued and listened to. She is respectful of past negative experiences and wants to uncover those as to not replicate the same mistakes. She also tries to glean from any past negative experience with treatment side effects or particular medications, and always takes a broad look at other psychodynamic factors that may be contributing to the treatment impact.
She has always stayed engaged and in-tune with the cutting edge of psychiatry. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is a newer technology that allows patients who may have had refractory illness and depression to improve when they may have given up hope of normal functioning and a better baseline.
Personal Interests
Education & Experience
Dr. Tutson completed her undergraduate in biology from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.
She received her medical degree from the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Following the completion of an Internship in Pediatrics, she completed both her General Psychiatry Residency and a Fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
She practiced at the Mental Health Retardation Authority (MHMRA), where she was the Child and Adolescent Supervisor with the Children’s Mental Health Plan. During this time, she provided ongoing training and supervision of home/school-based therapeutic treatment teams as well as the initial Child Psychiatric Evaluations, Pediatric Psychopharmacology, and Individual Child Psychotherapy.
At the University of Houston Health Center- Central Campus, Dr. Tutson was Chief Psychiatrist and provided psychiatric services to undergrad, graduate, and professional students as well as supervising the staff psychiatrist and mental health nurses. Duties included initial psychiatric evaluations, medication management; crisis management; individual psychotherapy; and adult ADHD evaluations to assess the need for neuropsychological testing/ pharmacologic intervention and/ or referral to for Students with Disabilities allowing access to accommodations. She was awarded Special Recognition for Outstanding Service in Higher Education for Students with Disabilities.
Other positions included both inpatient and outpatient care of patients for psychiatric and psychopharmacology evaluations and ongoing medication management as well as comprehensive disability evaluations in several different settings. From crisis management to coordination of care and treatment plan development, Dr. Tutson handled an array of clinic duties and treated both adult and adolescent patients.
At Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles, duties included psychiatric evaluations, medicine management/ follow up appointments, routine staffing, rotating ER and weekend coverage to inpatients, overseeing the Intense Outpatient Program, rotating weekly outpatient crisis management, and treatment plan development.
She opened her private practice in Beverly Hills, CA, where she specialized in psychopharmacology, individual therapy, family therapy, play therapy, adult ADHD addiction medicine, school consultations, and clinical correlation of psychological testing to develop clinical individual education plans (IEP). She also evaluated patients pursuing higher education for appropriate ADA Accommodations and coordinate access to Services for Students with Disabilities.
Most recently, she was the Staff Psychiatrist at the Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD in Houston, TX, where she performed psychiatric evaluations and medication management for the Adult, Child, and Adolescent Population.
Certifications & Memberships
- Diplomate, Adult Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology
Diplomate, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - Member, American Medical Association
- Member, American Psychiatric Association
- Member, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
