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Millions of Americans face the reality of living with a mental illness or occasional mental distress. Emotional stress, anxiety, and depression can trigger chemicals in the brain that turn on pain signals in the rest of your body, including the gut. Taking care of your mental health plays a pivotal role in your overall health.
HOW A MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL CAN SUPPORT YOUR OPTIMAL HEALTH
"If something is off in your body, it's going to impact your brain"
A psychiatrist can help identify the underlying cause of an illness and help determine whether it's physical symptoms can be reduced by addressing the individual's mental health. Psychiatrists receive medical training that allows them to prescribe medications and carry out procedures to target the physiological symptoms. They examine both psychological and physiological symptoms and work closely with primary care physicians and other mental health professionals to devise appropriate treatment plans. At IOPBM, gut health is tied into psychiatric visits because of the way that physical pain can put our body and mind in a place of activation and hyper vigilance, causing bloating, constipation, and other gastrointestinal discomfort. These sessions help you identify how emotions affect how the body feels and help create practices to heal both emotional and physical symptoms.
A psychologist helps individuals to better manage and cope with the effects of mental health conditions. They assist in identifying a path for people to take when trying to solve behavioral and mental health problems and undergo years of training and education to provide a variety of mental health services. Psychologist visits at IOPBM consist of individual and group sessions. A visit with a psychologist at IOPBM would focus on how GI symptoms and mental health are correlated. GI symptoms can add to mental health struggles and stress, and vice-versa. However, with support there can be an opportunity to better your quality of life by learning how to regulate the autonomic nervous system.
Dr. McFadden is trained in:
Dr. Whitney McFadden Whitney, MD is a women's Psychiatrist and neuroscientist dedicated to helping women develop a relationship with their body and intimacy with their physical and emotional connection. Often physical pain can put our body and mind in a place of activation and hypervigilance. She has learned from her own healing what it's like to feel discomfort and ignore the signals that something is wrong. She has opened up to become more attuned to her body and develop a deeper knowing in what her body needs to heal. She has witnessed the healing that comes from a deep practice of the body's capacity to hold sensation and develop safety in knowing that these sensations are important and essential to feel. In her journey, she has developed a life that is full of nurturing, deep connection with others, relationship with nature, and attunement to body rhythms that serve her health and wellbeing.
