Probably one the biggest reasons I went into medicine and then psychiatry was my younger brother David, who has Down syndrome. Having a sibling with special needs made me more sensitive to the needs of the other, spoken and unspoken. This can be a double edged sword I’ve come to learn. Later when I was working as a doctor I could feel the compassion being drained out of me by an over-stretched, broken health system, and I hated it. I struggled to balance the needs of the system, my birth family and the family I had made- feeling pulled in every direction. Every day I woke feeling nauseous at the idea of going to work. Compounding this was a sinking feeling that the time and resource poor system meant I was not able to practice medicine in a way that respected all aspects of the person.

A wise friend suggested psychotherapy and I’m so grateful I listened. There is still a lot of stigma around doctors admitting they need help and being made to feel ashamed they’re not ‘strong enough’ and they don’t fit into this machine. Therapy, along with a period receiving mentoring, helped me unpack what I was going through and name my passions and purposes for how I wanted to practice psychiatry. It didn’t make me ‘bullet proof’, I still have struggles, as we all do, but I feel more resilient and open to learn from my experiences.

I hope all this has made me more compassionate with my patients and families and that we all need someone to listen to us, hear our story. Sometimes there isn’t an answer to the suffering but to bear witness to it. That every person is someone to be treated with dignity and respect.

As I discovered the trailblazers who have shown it is possible to see the whole person and not just a diagnostic code I began to see a way forward for myself as a whole doctor. When I returned after the birth of my daughter I had to make a distinct choice, to go back to the style I’d practiced in before or step out into a new frontier- accompanying patients with mental health issues into other approaches to their health. I felt I had to make the step and be true myself and everything I’ve learned from the past.

I use the principles of Functional Medicine to help my patients improve their health. The Functional Medicine model is an individualized, patient-centered, science-based approach that empowers patients and practitioners to work together to address the underlying causes of disease and promote optimal wellness. It requires a detailed understanding of each patient’s genetic, biochemical, and lifestyle factors and leverages that data to direct personalized treatment plans that lead to improved patient outcomes. At the heart of this I am still a psychiatrist, listening and helping my patients to make sense of their world and experiences (inside and out).

By addressing root cause, rather than naming and listing symptoms, practitioners become oriented to identifying the complexity of disease. They may find one condition has many different causes and, likewise, one cause may result in many different conditions. As a result, Functional Medicine treatment targets the specific manifestations of disease in each individual.

I am embedded within a multi-disciplinary team and have a wealth of professionals I can refer to to deliver excellent care.

Sometimes they are curious to how I started out and how medicine can ‘work’ in this way. Others, truthfully, are not supportive and feel that this is at odds to ‘traditional medicine’ but I believe this is untrue. Some people will always need some approaches to stay safe or well. I think the heart of a doctor should always to ‘do no harm’ and to show compassion – that we should rigorously examine our practices against evidence base and risk profiles- and present our patients with options fitting with their values, culture and beliefs.