Integrative Assessment and Treatment

Integrative assessment and treatment are the heart of how we practice healthcare at ARC Wellness. We believe our clients are seeking relief from physical and socio-emotional distress and a path to recovery–and they are not alone!

Do you know that depressed mood is the leading cause of disability in people aged 14 to 44 years old living in the United States?

Also, more than 50% of individuals who have mood problems are trying to relieve their symptoms with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Nutritional interventions, natural botanical products, lifestyle modifications, physical medicine (manipulative therapies), mind-body techniques, and non-allopathic whole-system approaches such as traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda are designated as CAM.

Many CAM therapies have relatively few consistent positive findings from large, well-designed, placebo-controlled studies, and knowledge of how and why these methods work can also be limited. According to Lake and Spain Turner (2017), “patients who use nutraceuticals or other CAM therapies not supported by strong research place themselves at risk of disappointing outcomes or potentially serious safety problems when such therapies are used in combination with pharmacologic agents.”

We have addressed this problem by onboarding a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner who is certified by the Integrative Psychiatric Institute. Laurel Myers Hurst, MS, MA, APRN-CNP, PMHNP-BC, CIPP collaborates with our psychiatric physicians to provide patient-centered care that includes pharmaceutical medications, psychotherapy, and evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine.

If you opt for a full integrative assessment, the interview process may seem more lengthy and more wide-ranging than a standard psychiatric evaluation. By pre-appointment questionnaires or through in-session questions, Laurel will explore issues of spirituality and purpose in life; concerns on your mind like trauma, grief, personal values, and troubling thought patterns; markers of physical wellness including gut-brain health, metabolic status, immune regulation, exposure to toxins, and history of injury or illness; plus, lifestyle considerations of relationships, sleep, habits, nutrition, and exercise.

Despite decades of research and billions of dollars of industry funding, evidence supporting pharmacological treatment alone for treatment of depression and other psychiatric disorders is not compelling.

At ARC Wellness, we are using the best evidence to provide the care our clients deserve using all the tools available to us.

In that vein, we welcome integrative psychiatric nurse practitioner Laurel to the ARC provider family!

1. Lake, & M. Spain Turner. (2017). Urgent need for improved mental health care and a more collaborative model of care. The Permanente Journal, 21(4).

https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/17-024