Holistic mental health care takes a wide-scope approach to health. It goes beyond the “take a pill for your ill” approach of conventional medicine. It doesn’t give out a diagnosis and pill and hope for the best. It evaluates each person as a whole to provide the most comprehensive treatment path to feeling better, whether that includes psychiatric medications or not.

Holistic mental health care recognizes that mental health symptoms are multifactorial, meaning they’re not caused by one thing. Rather, they result from a combination of different causes and contributors. Mental health treatment is complex because these causes and contributors are many. The good news it that evaluating for them leads to various treatment options.

Holistic psychiatrists take the best of their conventional medical training (4 years of medical school + 4 years of psychiatry residency) and combine it with non-conventional treatments like root cause analysis, individualized nutrient therapy, diet, movement, sleep, herbs and supplements, and wellness coaching. They’ve gone beyond their conventional medical training to seek out books, articles, lectures, and courses on medical treatment frameworks outside of conventional medicine like functional, integrative, metabolic, nutritional, lifestyle, orthomolecular, and mind-body medicine. All this so they can help their you, their patient, in various ways aside from prescription medication.

• Functional medicine focuses on using lab work to uncover the underlying causes of a symptom. For example, depressive symptoms can be caused by blood sugar dysregulation, thyroid abnormalities, obstructive sleep apnea and Celiac disease. Protein indigestion, abnormal lithium, magnesium, zinc, or copper levels, methylation imbalances, low vitamin B12, vitamin D, omega 3, or iron levels may also be playing a role. It emphasizes that “normal” lab results do not indicate that someone is healthy or feeling well. Functional medicine uses narrower lab work ranges that represent optimal health instead of conventionally used result ranges, which are based on averages of large groups that include many sick people.

• Integrative medicine is an approach to healthcare that includes practices not traditionally part of conventional medicine. These include herbs and supplements, meditation, wellness coaching, acupuncture, massage, movement, and nutrition. It “integrates” conventional approaches and complementary therapies to achieve health and healing.

• Metabolic medicine prioritizes identifying and treating metabolic dysfunction, such as insulin resistance, for overall health. The link between mental illness and metabolic disorders is clear. Reversing metabolic disorders like type 2 diabetes through dietary interventions, particularly low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets, have been shown to decrease mental health symptoms significantly.

• Nutritional medicine brings to attention the impact of the food we eat on our mood/thought and physical symptoms. The Standard American Diet is calorie dense, but nutrient-deficient and chemical-laden, resulting in a decline of our metabolic processes, aka all of the biochemical reactions keeping us functioning. The brain is the most metabolically active organ utilizing ∼20% of the total body resting metabolic rate, and thus shows the first signs of nutritional deficiencies.

• Lifestyle medicine uses therapeutic lifestyle interventions to help people feel better. It works through six pillars: whole food-based nutrition, physical activity, stress management, avoidance of risky substances, restorative sleep, and social connections.

• Orthomolecular medicine takes the approach that each person has individualized nutrient needs. So just because Mrs. S needs 500 mg of Vit C daily to feel well mentally, emotionally, and physically doesn’t mean Mr. R has the same need. Tens of thousands of patients struggling with their mental health have been treated with personalized doses of nutrients, such as SAMe, vitamin B6, zinc, folic acid and vitamin B12.

• Mind-body medicine appreciates that mental health isn’t restricted to our heads. Rather our minds and our bodies are intricately linked. Since mental health symptoms present with both mental (mood and thought) and physical symptoms, we can and should approach treatment from both angles.

Overall, holistic psychiatry provides treatment options aside from and alongside psychiatric medication to help you feel fully better.