MEET DR. FERMO

Dr. Fermo is a double Board-Certified Adult and Child & Adolescent psychiatrist with 25 years of experience. He attended the University of Oklahoma. He completed residency training at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and completed his child fellowship at the UC Children’s Hospital. He provides a thorough diagnosis, including co-morbidities, support, and psycho-education to his patients and families, so that they may make the best decision for an individualized treatment plan.

His experience begins with exposure in his early years growing up with parents, who were both were psychiatrists. (He also has other siblings in psychiatry as well as extended family). They lived on state hospital grounds prior to deinstitutionalization in the late 70s and 80s. At the age of 15, he worked in the kitchen Central State Hospital in Norman, Oklahoma prior to working there as a Psychiatric Aid during pre-medical student years. Upon completion of medical school, he was determined to pursue a career in psychiatry.

During residency and fellowship at UC, he was fortunate to be mentored by leading experts and researchers in the area of bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, emergency psychiatry, psychodynamic psychoanalytical psychotherapy just to name a few. Additionally, he had the opportunity to moonlight as the Director of the Alcoholism Clinic, Attending at the Crisis Stabilization Center at UC inpatient treatment center, worked as the psychiatrist on staff at Psychiatric Emergency Services at UC, and was the lead psychiatrist at the homeless shelter (Drop-in-Shelter) in downtown Cincinnati as well as the in-house psychiatrist at UC.

Upon completion of a fellowship in child psychiatry at UC Children’s Hospital, his career brought him to Charleston, South Carolina to provide services to Charter of Charleston, a private psychiatric inpatient hospital unit working with adults, children, chemical dependency on acute psychiatric units with his multidisciplinary treatment team. At that time, he was Director of Youth Services and was in charge of the Acute Unit and the long-term Residential Unit for Children and Adolescents. He also started the outpatient clinic at the facility. He eventually became the medical director of the entire psychiatric hospital when it was purchase by Palmetto Lowcountry Behavior Health Services.

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His career then transitioned to the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), Institute of Psychiatry as an assistant clinical professor, working at two outpatient psychiatric clinics, followed by becoming the Clinical Director of the East Cooper Outpatient Clinic for MUSC in Mount Pleasant.

In April 2010, he engineered the opening of a private outpatient clinic in Mount Pleasant: East Cooper Psychiatric Solutions, LLC, which has now evolved into his solo private practice: Fermo Psychiatric Solutions, Inc. He provides adult, child & adolescent and geriatric psychiatric evaluations, diagnosis, education, and treatment primarily through medication management, striving to help patients once again, regain or become better functioning individuals in their environment.

Dr. Fermo is a consultant, has served on advisory boards, provided Continuing Medical Education, been national and local speakers for pharmaceutical speaker bureaus, receiving honoraria form 28 different pharmaceutical companies involving 50 different psychotropic medications for use in various psychiatric conditions. He has been invited to serve on these pharmaceutical companies due to his expertise in psychopharmacology.

Dr. Fermo has also given his time to the community to discuss various topics in psychiatry such as bullying, multiple psychiatric disease states such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, ADHD, PTSD, insomnia, psychopharmacology, and pediatric depression just to name a few, through schools, various medical societies including nurse practitioners and physician assistants, psychotherapy associations, CHADD, Darkness to Light, to the community and through the media. He has also served on multiple non-profit foundations such as Life Management Organization, Nathan’s Kids (Autism support group), and Post-partum Depression Support Groups.