Personal Experience Leads Dr. Gardner to Psychotic Disorders Program

Laura Gardner, MD, tends to the plants in her office daily with patience, compassion, understanding, and attentiveness, and is rewarded with lush greenery surrounding her. She brings the same knowledge, skill, energy, and passion to her role as Director of the Psychotic Disorders Program at Silver Hill.

Dr. Gardner joined Silver Hill in fall 2025 and oversees The Lodge program, a residential program that provides specialized care for patients with complex psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder with psychotic features, and substance psychosis. The Lodge delivers highly personalized, intensive treatment plans tailored to each individual’s needs.

Like her gardening successes, Dr. Gardner believes that with the right conditions, people can stabilize, reconnect, and grow in ways that once seemed out of reach.
“I have a passion for treating complex and severe mental illness,” she says.“We have the opportunity to provide the kind of comprehensive care that these patients truly need.”

Dr. Gardner draws on more than a decade of experience delivering individualized treatment for people with mental illness. She joins Silver Hill from Northern Westchester Hospital, where she served as Associate Director of Behavioral Health. She previously held leadership positions at Montefiore Medical Center, including Medical Director of the Inpatient Psychiatric and ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) Service.

“Dr. Gardner is a godsend,” Mark Russ, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Silver Hill, says. “She comes to us with a wealth of experience working with complex individuals and people other practitioners may shy away from. She really embraces that and loves working with that population.”

“She is extremely knowledgeable and is a doctor’s doctor in terms of her ethics and work habits and commitment to patients,” Dr. Russ adds. “She’s not fazed by anything. She’s a can-do individual and just rolls her sleeves up and does what needs to be done.”

Dr. Gardner has already made her own mark on the program, introducing cognitive behavioral therapy for psychosis (CBTp) as the primary modality of treatment at The Lodge and is having her staff trained in the evidence-based psychotherapy. CBTp, which is often combined with medication, has been shown to reduce stress caused by hallucinations and delusions, as well as improve social and personal functioning and self-empowerment.

“Clinical trials back up the effectiveness of CBT for psychosis. Hallucinations or delusions have power over these individuals, and this is a way of shifting power back to the person and having them regain a sense of control and perspective,” Dr. Gardner says. “Less than one percent of licensed clinicians are trained in CBT for psychosis, which makes our program stand out.”

Dr. Gardner also plans to expand the nutrition, exercise, and family components of the program, as well as implement cognitive remediation therapy, a behavioral intervention that targets problems with cognition.
“The goal at the end of treatment at The Lodge is to have patients reconnected to all aspects of their lives that they were previously untethered from,” Dr. Gardner says.

Dr. Gardner studied physics as an undergraduate, but a deeply personal experience steered her toward medicine and psychiatry in particular. When she was young, her older brother developed schizophrenia. Watching him navigate the illness left a lasting impression.

“He cycled through hospitalizations, and it was frustrating because it wasn’t enough for him to get better,” she recalls. “I’ve seen what this does to families, and that’s why I’m so passionate about this work.”

Dr. Gardner approaches each patient not as a diagnosis but as a person with a story, a family, and a life interrupted. She understands how destabilizing psychosis can be, for the individual and everyone around them.

Dr. Gardner spent years in inpatient psychiatry, where she treated some of the most seriously ill patients. The work was meaningful, she says, but it often came with limitations.

“The average inpatient stay is about seven to nine days,” she says. “For someone experiencing psychosis, that’s only scratching the surface. I am always trying to push back against the business model of decreasing length of stay because that’s what the insurance companies want. We need more access and increased length of stay. I often had a frustrating feeling that we aren’t doing enough in inpatient. Residential treatment should be the gold standard, but we don’t have a health system that supports that.”

The continuum of care, particularly the residential level, at Silver Hill was a major draw for Dr. Gardner. Patients in the psychotic disorders program stay for a minimum of six weeks, allowing time to address not just acute symptoms, but the broader disconnect that psychosis can create.

Dr. Gardner feels that she has found her ideal position, one that is equally challenging and rewarding, and one in which she can make a profound difference in the lives of people impacted by complex mental illness.

“There’s a lot of room for growth with the patients and the program,” she says. “And there’s strong support by Silver Hill leadership to keep evolving.”

Just as her plants grow and thrive with loving support in her sunlit office, The Lodge program and the individuals it serves are buoyed by Dr. Gardner’s abiding belief in what’s possible over time.

Learn more about The Lodge here.

Read more stories from the 10th issue of Silver Linings here.