This is the first blog entry for the new blog that we’re adding to our website.  Perhaps, it’s not a momentous occasion for the rest of the world, but we’re looking forward to having an opportunity to write down some thoughts about psychiatry, psychiatric research, and, perhaps, occasional entries on life in general.

I thought that for our first blog, I could explain my reasons for founding MindTherapy Clinic.  Until recently, I had always worked in collaborative settings – in hospitals and clinics.  In these settings, there has always been an advantage in terms of having multiple perspectives about a patient, airing different viewpoints about patient treatments, having the easy availability of different diagnostic and treatment options, and regular communication between various clinicians.  In private practice, on the other hand, one often has the ability to spend more time with patients and work without bureaucratic restrictions, but one often feels that lack of collaborative care.  Even when patients are obtaining a range of needed services, it is extremely difficult to have the psychiatrists, psychologists, and other clinicians involved reach each other with any regularity to discuss a patients’ care.

Interestingly, collaborative care is more frequently seen in clinics providing care to the indigent.  MindTherapy Clinic is an attempt to provide the advantages of a clinic in a private psychiatric practice.  Our vision is to provide innovative care – using new and developing technologies, medications, psychotherapeutic treatments, and nutritional interventions and having a staff that stays on the forefront of objective, scientifically-supported care; our vision is to provide integrative care – combining the best of modern psychiatric care with a respect for complementary modalities such as meditation and yoga therapy; and our vision is to personalize care where we have a variety of clinicians and treatments available, have a full range of treatments available to provide a treatment program that fits a person’s needs and not try to fit a person into a treatment program.  In the end, it is about treating the whole person with the best care that we can.  Our vision is to also be a resource for other therapists and psychiatrists by offering a place to refer patients for additional and complementary services that they don’t offer and to be a resource for our community by offering some services on a low fee basis.