Our Approach to Psychiatry
Unprecedented Person-Centered Care Within a Holistic Evidence-Based Team Approach.
What makes good psychiatry good? For one thing, good psychiatry demands a trusting relationship between the prescriber and their clients. To find the right therapeutic dose, and to avoid the all-too-common event of over-prescribing medications, psychiatric appointments must be collaborative, a space in which the minutiae of a client’s experience, in regard to both their symptoms and medication side effects are freely discussed. And that’s where trust comes in, since such open and attuned connections can’t happen without it. But trust isn’t all of it: hope needs to be in the room, too, both hope from the prescriber, and hope from within the client regarding the client’s future. People are not motivated to change if they don’t have a dream about where they are headed. So the collaboration between client and prescriber also demands some mutual sense of where they want to head.
Trust, hope, a collaborative spirit and a team approach are what we consider the central “medicine” of psychiatry; a “medicine” that exceeds any pill in efficacy. And yet today we live in a world in which psychopharmacology is increasingly becoming isolated and transactional: a mechanical act of writing prescriptions. It’s thus no wonder that the United States outranks any other country in the world in the use of psychotropic medications. At Ellenhorn, however, we take extra-pharmacological ingredients seriously, and work tirelessly to combine them with a multidisciplinary team approach and the high level of contact and accessibility associated with concierge psychiatry.
Our psychiatrists hold very small caseloads, which allows them to devote significant time to the individual care of clients, gives them significant flexibility in regard to crisis situations or changes in their clients’ lives, and ensures their ready ability to stay in constant communication with their teams and attend family meetings etc. Each of our psychiatrists is on call 24 hours a day.
Ellenhorn uses the Program for Assertive Community Treatment (PACT) model of care, an intensive multidisciplinary form of treatment considered the evidence-based best practice for individuals experiencing complex events of mind and mood. PACT programs are often called “hospitals without walls” because they combine the multidisciplinary team approach of a hospital with regularly scheduled communication. In fact, our doctors participate in daily team meetings modeled on hospital “rounds.”
The ability to work flexibly and to communicate regularly due to very low caseloads combined with the time to regularly meet and plan with a multidisciplinary team result in the most effective form of psychiatry for individuals experiencing complex and difficult events of mind and mood. This is the exceptional approach to psychiatry we practice at Ellenhorn.
Cutting-Edge Innovation
A few of our innovative approaches in psychiatry at Ellenhorn:
Metabolic Psychiatry
Open Dialogue
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy
Metabolic psychiatry is an emerging approach that treats acute or chronic mental-health conditions by altering metabolism through the types and timing of food intake, body movement, sleep and other modalities. It is where metabolic health and mental health meet.
Metabolism is the sum of the chemical reactions that take place within each cell of a living organism that provide energy for vital processes and synthesize new organic material. By making specific behavioral changes, we can make alterations at the cellular level that will impact energy and cell function. In fact, emerging science suggests that these changes can have a profound impact on brain function and mental health.
These benefits are available to almost everyone, and the main “side effects” of such biologic intervention, i.e., improved physical health, increased energy and the likelihood of increased longevity, are all positive. The challenge is that these benefits do require significant effort to achieve. That being said, we believe that the intensive, yet empathetic, support of the Ellenhorn team provides a unique opportunity for those who are motivated to make these changes in order to reap the extensive benefits of an improved metabolism.
There is ample scientific and clinical research to support the idea that these interventions are powerful biological treatments for mental-health conditions. Scientists have discovered what these behavioral changes can accomplish on the cellular level and how they can improve brain function at the same, if not higher, level of detail as that of psychiatric medications. For more information on metabolic psychiatry, please visit the Metabolic Mind website. Metabolic Mind, a non-profit advocacy initiative of Baszucki Group, offers resources for those looking to learn more about metabolic and ketogenic therapies for mental health. Metabolic Mind amplifies the science and practice of metabolic psychiatry, as well as personal stories, to offer education, community and hope to people struggling with mental health challenges and those who care for them.