In conventional medicine, assessment and treatment of mental health conditions generally involves matching a patient’s symptoms to a standard diagnosis and then prescribing one or several medications that have been approved for that diagnosis. We believe there are several important limitations to this approach.
People diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder and even psychosis or schizophrenia often have dramatically different symptoms from others with the same diagnosis. For example, an individual diagnosed with depression may feel deep grief while another may actually experience emotional numbness. These variations in symptoms reflect very different biochemical and physiological imbalances which cannot be addressed effectively with a single treatment approach. In fact, we even find that patients with very similar symptoms can sometimes have dramatically different underlying imbalances which require very different treatment approaches.
For these reasons, our approach to patient assessment is designed to uncover the unique underlying factors contributing to each individual’s symptoms. We begin by spending ample time with each patient so that we can gain a thorough understanding of their symptoms and circumstances. We also use specialized in-office diagnostic procedures and innovative laboratory tests such as methylation analysis, urinary pyrrole testing, essential and toxic metal assessment, salivary hormone testing and heart rate variability testing. These tests help us identify important contributing factors such as genetic vulnerabilities, nutritional imbalances, toxins, hormonal imbalances and the impact of chronic stress on the nervous system.
The combined approach of thoroughly assessing each patient’s symptoms and medical history with targeted diagnostic procedures and lab testing provides a window into each patient’s underlying imbalances that allows our treatment approach to be highly specific and individualized.