Why I started Women’s Wellness Psychiatry

Women's Wellness Psychiatry was founded in 2017 to fill the gap in the care of women across important life stages, and to provide an approach beyond the conventional. All of our clinicians - psychiatrists and psychotherapists - are highly trained in both reproductive and integrative mental health. We know that women's mental health is under researched and under-treated, and important life stages such as pregnancy or perimenopause even more so. 

We also know that women are not just smaller men in terms of physiology and treatment responses and need a unique and individualized approach to achieve optimal wellness. Every patient that enters our clinic starts with a comprehensive assessment with a trained psychiatrist. This assessment factors in biological and hormonal causes of mental symptoms, psychological and life experience contributors, sources of stress and lifestyle factors, and more. This thorough initial session will begin a collaboration between the doctor and patient to create a treatment plan that is holistic and individualized. 

• It may include prescription medication, with a detailed conversation about the risks, benefits, and reproductive safety of these tools. 

• It may include a focus on repleting missing micronutrients and using evidence-informed nutraceuticals and supplements to optimize biology. 

• It will include a consultation on the most appropriate style of psychotherapy to reach the treatment goals (and we have clinicians who specialize in trauma-focused treatments, CBT, DBT, mindfulness, and more). 

• It will advise on nutritional approaches to mental health, ways to improve stress and its consequences on the body, the role of sleep and other lifestyle measures for mental wellbeing. 

• It can include advice on hormones, gut health, inflammation, and collaboration with your other clinicians. 

The clinical team at Women's Wellness Psychiatry has specialized training for the most expert care, with education and certifications from renowned institutions such as Postpartum Support International, the Integrative Psychiatry Institute, and more. We meet weekly to connect about our patients and make sure treatment goals are achieved. We strive to stay current on research breakthroughs and novel therapeutics, with an always-learning mentality and a mindset that our patients will always teach us about themselves. We look forward to partnering with you in your mental health care. 

What is Integrative Psychiatry?

When most people think of psychiatry, they often think about a doctor diagnosing a condition based on a set of symptoms and prescribing medication. However, there is so much more to optimizing mental health. Integrative psychiatry allows us to assess the root causes of mental disease, including predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors, and create a treatment plan that takes into account individual life experiences and physiology. 

When a patient comes to see me, I will explore various contributors to their presenting chief concern. For example, are there genetic vulnerabilities? Could there be a metabolic or hormonal issue? What is the role of inflammation in the presentation? Are there micronutrient deficiencies or environmental exposures that are worsening symptoms? What kinds of stressors are happening? How is nutrition and gut health playing a role? What role has trauma played? How does spirituality factor into this? What are the psychological underpinnings of this presentation? And many related questions. 

Most importantly, the conversation is a collaboration between myself and my patient. They are the expert on their experience, and my job is to help them synthesize that experience with the knowledge and expertise I have to create a thorough picture of what is causing distress. I have unfortunately heard from many patients that a prior clinician may have ignored their narrative and not taken this collaborative approach. 

Upon answering many of the above questions (and to do so may take time, laboratory data, and other assessments), we can then put together a comprehensive treatment plan that integrates many different modalities. An integrative plan will often include biological tools, such as prescription medications, nutraceuticals, and botanical options, psychological tools, such as mind-body practices and psychotherapy, and lifestyle interventions that focus on nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress, and social supports, with complementary treatments such as acupuncture, light therapy, and more. 

The premise behind this integrative approach is first that we are more than just a set of symptoms, second that the mind, body, and spirit cannot be separated, and third that each person is an individual, with unique responses, life experiences, and physiology. The goal of this approach is to achieve optimal wellness, not just lack of disease. 

What is Reproductive psychiatry?

Reproductive psychiatry recognizes the importance of key life stages in a person's life that have a hormonal influence and a unique psychological experience. These stages can be pregnancy and postpartum, challenging fertility journeys, perimenopause and the menopausal transition, premenstrual struggles, and more. This subspecialty of psychiatry is a growing field with a lot of emerging data on key treatment tools, such as the reproductive safety of various psychotropic medications, the ways in which complementary tools can be applied during these life stages, and role of hormones and changing physiology on mental health. 

I look forward to meeting with you soon.

Anna Glezer, MD