What life events or challenges that you’ve experienced (could be minor, could be major) – whether you’ve experienced them directly or via someone close to you, have had any type of impact on your desire to pursue a career in psychiatry?

When I went to college my life kind of fell apart. I suffered from years of anxiety and depression that seemed to come out of nowhere and hit me like a ton of bricks.

I have spent the next several decades finding way to help myself. I first focused on psychotherapy and medication and after found so many other avenues of healing.

How did those events impact you emotionally/morally? How, if at all did those events impact the way you view how our current system teaches us to treat patients with mental health challenges?

My depression and anxiety made me so much more aware of how hard it is to be human and how lost people can feel. It also made me acutely aware of how many people do not find the alleviation of their mental health symptom from psychiatry and medications.

I have grown to hate the word “treatment resistant” which in psychiatry means that the person has not responded to psychotherapy and several medications. People with the label are left to feel that there are no other options to healing when in fact there are many options that few providers are unaware of that can be called integrative like diet, testing to identify the underlying physical trigger (like infections or heavy metals), yoga, exercise and many, many others. 

When and why did you decide to actually focus on practicing Integrative Psychiatry, specifically, and how was your decision shaped by the experiences above?

I saw the limitation of “traditional mental health” (psychotherapy and medication) first hand as a person who was suffering from depression and anxiety in and early days of my career as a psychologist in public hospitals in New York City. It was light a light switch went off in me drove me to learn about as many healing modalities as I could so that I could bring them back to my patients, friends and to help myself be as balanced and happy as possible.

What methods or practices do you utilize to help individuals get/feel better?

I use a combination of psychodynamic psychotherapy (fostering healing relationships with people that allow them to understand who they are and how their formative experiences shaped them), practices to help diffuse the effects of traumatic experiences including EMDR, yoga stress management, mental health nutrition and functional medicine testing to address physical blocks to mental health healing.

How did people react when you share this Integrative/Holistic approach with them – whether it be patients or other doctors?

I have been doing this work for close to 20 years now. At the beginning doctors and patients were skeptical. Over the years there has been an increasing openness to integrative practices and many people are seeking my out specifically because I focus on creating treatment plan drawing on many traditions. There is no doubt this is the future of mental health.