Holistic Approach

In addition to traditional psychiatric treatment, NBI specializes in holistic and organic psychiatric treatment, which gives us a niche among psychiatric providers. We see mental health treatment like lawn management. Mental illnesses are like troubled lawn with unhealthy grass and uncontrollable weed growth. Unwanted and disruptive emotional and thinking states are like unwanted weeds growing in the lawn. Emotional symptoms are not just limited to emotion, but often accompanied by other psychological or cognitive symptoms including aggression, irritability or agitation, changes in personality or behavior, inattention, confusion, forgetfulness, or disorganization. Traditional Pharmaceuticals treat the plants, but often facilitate both grass and weeds growth. That’s why a lot of patients don’t feel better, sometimes even feel worse or suicidal after taking antidepressants. On the other hand, our holistic treatment treats the soil. 

The goal of our treatment is to correct the chemical imbalance of the soil and put the weeds in control and help the grass to grow. To a certain extent, we are like organic gardeners.

According to the stress model, when humans or animals are under stress, the body will respond with elevated cortisol, adrenaline, and glutamate levels. Those hormones and neurotransmitters can put the human or animal in a “fight-or-flight” response. In this situation, they are considered as unwanted weeds because they can suppress the normal grasses like neurotransmitters functioning such as dopamine, serotonin, GABA, and acetylcholine. Before the treatment, we assess the patient’s neurotransmitter conditions by using the Neurotransmitter Assessment Scale (NAS) based on clinical symptoms. If necessary, we can also test blood or urine neurotransmitter levels, although it can be quite costly and may not necessarily reflect the brain neurotransmitter level. In general, NAS can give a rough estimate of the major neurotransmitters including dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, GABA, and glutamate. 

Our first step of treatment is to control the unwanted emotion and improve the mind’s clarity by correcting the hyper glutamate state before improving other neurotransmitter functions. Ketamine is a powerful glutamate NMDA receptor blocker. We use intranasal ketamine treatment instead of invasive infusion. The blockage of glutamate receptors can lift the inhibition of dopamine, serotonin, GABA, and acetylcholine functioning. This process is very similar to pre-emergent lawn treatment to put a halt to the weed’s overgrowth. 

Our second step of neurotransmitters modulation is to use organic neurotransmitters supplements. Nashville Brain Institute (NBI) developed an internal neurotransmitter boosting system (NeuroSail) by using the organic neurotransmitter supplements for each main neurotransmitter – dopamine, serotonin, GABA, acetylcholine. Therefore, patients will not depend on external neurotransmitter stimulators. Instead, they make their own neurotransmitters more efficiently. This process is like using organic fertilizers to improve the lawn soil condition.

The third step is to use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to modulate certain areas of brain circuitry and enhance neurotransmitters functioning. 

Most of the time, we can use this holistic and organic treatment approach to correct the disruptive emotional condition and improve cognitive functioning without the necessity of pharmaceutical intervention.