Rustin D. Carter, MD

Dakota Carter, MD, EdD, is Board Certified in both general adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry. He is the Medical Director and Chair of Psychiatry for Eisenhower Behavioral Health.

Dr. Carter completed his medical degree at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston/McGovern Medical School. During his residency, Dr. Carter also earned a doctorate in education in Healthcare Leadership and Curriculum, after which he completed a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from McGovern Medical School.

Growing up in rural Texas and being openly gay, Dr. Carter was keenly aware of the lack of access to good medical and behavioral health care, which was a driving force to pursue medicine and psychiatry as a career. Before college, he volunteered with an organization that provided services to developmentally-delayed and autistic children and, during college, he substitute taught. “Both of these experiences underscored my desire to work with children,” states Dr. Carter. “Those experiences, coupled with the observation in medical school that most patients had some sort of behavioral health issue (addiction, grief, etc.), contributed to my pursuit of psychiatry as a subspecialty. I was fortunate to be able to secure dual-training in general psychiatry and child/adolescent psychiatry concurrently,” reflects Dr. Carter.

In working with patients, Dr. Carter starts from ground-zero in not making any judgmental assumptions about a patient. “I seek to be non-judgmental and make aim to make mental health discussions engaging and supportive, while dealing with intense issues,” states Dr. Carter. “I want to know about all of my patients’ lives – access to food, support systems, other health issues, and any other determinates of health to understand the whole patient.” Dr. Carter provides medication management and psychiatric services for patients across the life-span.

Dr. Carter recently published a textbook on cultural psychiatry focusing on how to be more culturally competent. He is an active member of the American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.