California Psychiatric Care
Sharon Hernandez, PMHNP-BC
Psychiatric care for adults navigating depression, anxiety, trauma, ADHD, recovery, identity, and the mental health changes that can come with perimenopause.
Some symptoms don't fit one clean label. Trauma can look like anxiety. Recovery can uncover depression that substances had been masking. Perimenopause can change sleep, concentration, energy, and mood. Sharon takes the full pattern seriously before building a treatment plan.
Sharon is accepting appointment requests from California adults — by telehealth across California or in person at the Rancho Palos Verdes office. Most major insurance is accepted, and self-pay is available. After the scheduling steps below are complete, our patient-care coordinator places the appointment on the schedule.
Insurance & Cost
Most major insurance accepted
Self-pay: $350 initial evaluation (75-90 min)
$150 follow-up visits (30 min)
Sharon sees patients using insurance and patients paying directly. Accepted plans include Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Oscar Health, and United Healthcare. If you plan to use insurance, the team verifies your benefits before scheduling, and your cost is set by your plan — typically a standard copay or coinsurance.
Paying directly instead? Sharon's initial psychiatric evaluation is a 75-90 minute visit at $350, and follow-up visits are 30 minutes at $150 — the same visit lengths and cash follow-up rate used for Canybec.
Visits are available by telehealth across California or in person at the Rancho Palos Verdes office.
A benefits check reflects the information available from your health plan at that time. It is not a guarantee of coverage, claim payment, or final cost — the insurer's final claim decision determines what you owe.
Scheduling
How scheduling works
Send the appointment request
Share basic contact, state, insurance or self-pay, and care-request information through Horizon Peak's secure intake path.
We check benefits and speak with you
If you plan to use insurance, the team verifies available benefits. Horizon Peak's patient-care coordinator then speaks with you and confirms the next scheduling step. Benefits verification describes the information available from your health plan at that time — it is not a guarantee that the insurer will pay a claim or that your final cost will match the estimate.
We place the evaluation on the schedule
After the benefits and coordinator steps are complete, the team places the appointment on the schedule and sends the confirmed details.
Clinical Focus
What Sharon focuses on
Mood and anxiety
Depression and anxiety don't always begin with an obvious cause. Sharon looks at how symptoms show up across sleep, concentration, energy, relationships, and day-to-day function. The goal is a practical psychiatric plan built around the person in front of her, not a checklist alone.
Trauma and recovery
Past experiences can shape emotional regulation, relationships, substance use, and the way someone responds to care. Sharon brings a trauma-informed approach to psychiatric evaluation and medication management. She meets patients where they are in recovery without reducing every concern to addiction. This is outpatient psychiatric care — not detoxification, residential treatment, or emergency care.
ADHD
ADHD can affect focus, follow-through, organization, and emotional regulation well into adulthood. Sharon works with adults who need a careful psychiatric assessment and a plan they can actually use in daily life.
LGBTQIA+ mental health
Sharon provides respectful, gender-affirming psychiatric care. A person's identity isn't treated as a symptom. She focuses on the mental health concern that brought the patient in while making room for the lived experiences that can affect stress, safety, relationships, and care.
Perimenopause and midlife mental health
Mood changes, anxiety, disrupted sleep, poor concentration, and low energy during perimenopause are often written off as stress. Sharon pays attention to the timing and the pattern. Her role is psychiatric assessment and treatment, with coordination with primary care or an OB-GYN when medical or hormonal evaluation is needed.
Approach
How Sharon works
Sharon welcomes adults across the lifespan, including people seeking care for the first time and those who have been through treatment before without getting a clear answer.
She starts by listening for the connections between symptoms, past experiences, physical health, substance use, identity, and the demands of daily life. From there, she and the patient build a plan that is evidence-based, realistic, and aligned with the patient's goals.
The point isn't only to quiet symptoms for a few weeks. It is to find a plan a patient can understand and sustain.
Background
Professional background
Sharon is a board-certified psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner licensed in California. She earned her psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner master's training through Purdue University Global and completed post-master's training in adult-gerontology primary care through West Coast University.
Before and alongside advanced practice, Sharon worked as a registered nurse in critical care and acute-care settings, including the cardiothoracic intensive care unit at Keck Hospital of USC. That background informs the way she thinks about psychiatric symptoms alongside sleep, medications, medical conditions, and physical health.
Credentials
At a glance
- Sharon Hernandez, PMHNP-BC
- Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner
- Licensed in California
- Trained in adult-gerontology primary care
- Telehealth across California
- In person: Rancho Palos Verdes office
- Most major insurance accepted
From the Horizon Peak clinical library
Reading that matches Sharon's focus areas
Request an evaluation with Sharon
Sharon is accepting appointment requests from California adults. Send the initial details, and our patient-care coordinator will check benefits when insurance is being used, speak with you, and place the evaluation on the schedule after those steps are complete.
Request an EvaluationHorizon Peak Health is not an emergency or crisis service. If you may harm yourself or someone else, call 911 or 988 now.