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?

I chose to go into Psychiatry after I realized the shortage of people in Medicine who actively comforted others. Medicine and Surgery in large parts resorted to procedures to comfort people. This was miraculous when done with focus on the person’s needs. It was a disaster when it was done with focus on the procedure’s needs. We were being taught procedure after procedure in learning medicine. I could not find adequate life in that procedure fraught world. As a result, I decided to search for life. And that led me to the field of Psychiatry.

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?

Psychiatry promised happiness to people. Like through the advertisements of antipsychotic medications where everyone was laughing because now finally through the miracle of science, a medicine to fix the dopamine problem in the brain had arrived. This was not true. And this got a lot of people on medications. Whereas there is a role for medicines, over reliance on them became a problem. And we saw a rising number of children being put on Antipsychotics before trying other treatment modalities. We saw Psychiatrists stop practicing Psychotherapy. And Mental Health remained a promise, unrealized. I realized early on that I was training to be a Medicine myself. That over-reliance on other medicines would only take me away from the work I had to do on myself. That helped me stop focusing on problems of other people and made me focus on my own view of life. This journey of discovery has been nothing short of amazing and I am blessed to be able to share some of those discoveries with people around me. 

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 had wonderful teachers who educated me about mental health and emphasized the Psychological aspect of all interactions. Psychiatry is a field that at its base lends itself to be practiced holistically as information about a person’s biological, psychological and social aspects of life all play a role in the formulation. And then I found out about all the wisdom of how a person of Nature sees life. There was no looking back once I got immersed in the world of herbs and plant medicine. I try to combine all these principals when I talk to people.

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

I utilize a number of modalities in my practice of Integrative Psychiatry. Meditation, mindfulness is something that is the backbone of my practice. I practice traditional psychiatry but have also been trained in Herbal Medicine so combine both of these modalities with Functional Medicine principles. I work very closely with a Nutritionist, Traditional Chinese Medicine Herbalist and Psychotherapists. I also utilize Psychotherapy and use a Trauma Informed Psychodynamic and Existential forms of psychotherapy. Recently I have, with great success, also started combining Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy with all the other modalities to work on people getting better. 

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

I have had a mother cry when she found out how I practiced. Her tears were of relief and also of grief at having spent so much time being trapped in the conventional psychiatric model. She mentioned about her adult son, “I wish he could be a child again so that I could get him treated with you”. I am glad to raise awareness about mental health and empower people to take ownership of their life journey.