Bio

Dr. Feller has been in practice since she graduated from medical school in 1977. She began her residency training at Chope Hospital in San Mateo and finished at UCSF, after which she did a two year physician fellowship in substance abuse treatment at the Fort Miley VA Hospital in San Francisco. After that she spent five years at Kaiser Oakland, where she was hired to expand and improve their substance abuse treatment program. It was at the height of the crack epidemic in Oakland and they doubled and vastly improved the program. Following that she entered private practice. In addition to providing individual psychotherapy and medication as needed she provided couples therapy and conducted therapy groups, especially for people in recovery. She has witnessed the power of groups in recovery, including the Twelve-Step program. In addition to clinical work she has served as an expert witness in civil cases and a consultant to the California Medical Board on issues of substance abuse. She is a psychoanalyst member of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP) and has taught classes for SFCP and for the UC Berkeley Extension program, with subjects such as analytic listening, analytic writing and the bio-medical basis of addiction.

Recently she has worked in the East Bay with patients suffering from severe mental illness, at Berkeley Mental Health and at the Oakland Community Service Center. Their patients are often homeless and sometimes suffer from drug or alcohol addiction. As a journalism student at Laney College she took part in a week-long media “blast” on homelessness, and seized the opportunity to research the causes and history of this calamity. To further understand what leaves people unhoused and what the solutions might be, she has served two terms on the Berkeley Homeless Commission. In addition she belongs to the Families Advocating for the Seriously Mentally Ill (FASMI), where they campaign for better treatment for loved ones and patients.

Dr. Feller is the author of American Madness: Fighting for Patients in a Broken Mental Health System (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).