For the past 25 years, I have seen a pattern over and over again. Many patients came to me taking several medications, and each one seemed to create a new problem. Someone felt depressed and was given an antidepressant. Then that medicine kept them awake, so they were given a sleeping pill. Then the sleeping pill made them tired, so they were given a stimulant. Then the stimulant made them anxious, so they were given a calming medicine, which could make them feel more down. In the end, many people felt overmedicated, had side effects, and only got partly better.

I also saw many people get the wrong diagnosis for years because they were checked against a DSM list of symptoms instead of being looked at as a whole person. People are much more complex than a checklist. Too often, patients felt their psychiatrist was not really hearing their day-to-day symptoms or how hard the side effects were to live with.

When I first trained, there was very little lab work to help guide mental health care. That has changed a lot over the last 20 years. I often wondered why standard psychiatry had not used more of these tools. There are genetic, metabolic, lifestyle, and nutrition-based ways to help many mental health symptoms. I came to see that in psychiatry, we often treat the symptom instead of the cause.

If you are depressed, you may be given an antidepressant. But what if the real reason is divorce, working nights, a medication that does not fit your genes, or an infection that has not been found? I want to look for the cause first.

I completed a Fellowship at Psychiatry Redefined and am now a Psychiatry Redefined Certified Functional Psychiatry Provider (CFPP). I use that training along with standard medical care to give you the best possible care.