Dr. Jennifer Sam, DNP, PMHNP-BC — Teen & Adolescent Psychiatry Specialist
Board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner and doctoral-level clinician dedicated to getting Michigan teenagers the accurate diagnosis and careful treatment they deserve.
Dr. Jennifer Sam is a board-certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner and Doctor of Nursing Practice at Skye Mental Health in Michigan.
She specializes in teen and adolescent psychiatry for patients ages 12–17 and ADHD across the lifespan. Dr. Sam holds her DNP from the University of Michigan–Flint, her ANCC board certification is valid through March 2027, and she is a Florence Nightingale Distinguished Alumni nominee — one of nursing's highest recognitions for clinical excellence.
She sees patients exclusively via telehealth across Michigan, with new patients typically available within 3 days.
Why Dr. Sam specializes in teenagers
Before co-founding Skye Mental Health, Dr. Jennifer Sam spent years working within some of the largest hospital systems in Metro Detroit. What she saw repeated itself with troubling consistency.
A teenager would start struggling — withdrawing from friends, falling behind in school, erupting in anger that didn't match the trigger, shutting down in ways that frightened their parents. The family would do what any responsible parent does: they'd go to their pediatrician. The pediatrician, a generalist doing their best with limited time and limited psychiatric training, would prescribe medication. When that medication didn't work, the dose would go up. When it still didn't work, the family would be told to wait longer, try harder, come back in three months.
What was rarely questioned was whether the original diagnosis was right.
A teenager's developing brain is neurologically and biochemically different from an adult's. The psychiatric medications that work predictably in a 35-year-old adult interact differently with an adolescent nervous system that is still forming. Misdiagnosis in this age group is not rare — it is common. ADHD gets missed and anxiety gets labeled as defiance. Depression presents as anger. Trauma gets treated as attention-seeking. When the medication doesn't work, it is frequently because the diagnosis driving it was incomplete.
Dr. Sam also noticed something else: most psychiatric clinicians actively avoid treating teenagers. Not because they lack skill, but because adolescent psychiatry comes with complexity — parents are involved, communication requires more care, and the therapeutic relationship with a teenager takes longer to build. Many clinicians in high-volume hospital settings simply don't want to invest that time. As a result, parents of struggling teenagers face a shortage of qualified providers who are both experienced with adolescents and willing to take the time their child actually needs.
After years of watching teenagers get cycled through diagnoses and dosage increases in systems that prioritized throughput over accuracy, Dr. Sam left. She co-founded Skye Mental Health because she believed Michigan teenagers deserved a clinician who would slow down, look at the whole picture, and get the diagnosis right before reaching for a prescription pad.
What to expect as
Dr. Sam's patient
As a mother of high school teenagers herself, Dr. Sam brings something to her clinical work that credentials alone cannot provide — a firsthand understanding of what it actually looks like when a teenager is struggling, and what parents go through trying to get them help.
Her initial evaluations run 60 minutes. That is not a formality — it is the minimum time required to understand a teenager well enough to make a responsible clinical decision. She will spend that time understanding your teenager's history, their symptoms, how those symptoms interact with school, friendships, family, and daily functioning, and any previous diagnoses or treatments that have been tried.
Follow-up appointments are 30 minutes or longer. Not two-minute refill calls. Each follow-up is a genuine clinical check-in — an opportunity to assess how your teenager is responding to treatment, adjust medication if needed, and make sure the treatment plan is actually working rather than just technically prescribed.
Dr. Sam's approach is not to medicate first and ask questions later. Her goal is to understand what is actually happening in your teenager's mind and arrive at an accurate diagnosis — because a precise diagnosis is the only thing that leads to a treatment plan that works.
Credentials and training
-
PMHNP-BC — ANCC Board Certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner
-
Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) — University of Michigan–Flint
-
University of Michigan–Flint
-
Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
-
Oakland University, Rochester, MI
-
Florence Nightingale Distinguished Alumni Runner-Up — Oakland University (2017). Awarded for excellence in nursing across education, leadership, and clinical practice.
-
Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing
-
Palliative care NP, critical care float NP, ICU RN — St. John Oakland Hospital and Detroit Medical Center
-
Teen and adolescent psychiatry (ages 12–17), ADHD (all ages)
Conditions
Dr. Sam treats
ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) — teens and adults
Anxiety disorders in adolescents
Depression in teenagers
Trauma and PTSD in adolescents
OCD in teenagers
Bipolar disorder