Conventional mental health care fails
to help people heal, become symptom-free, and develop habits to keep them well in the modern world. This is because it is pathology-focused, aiming to suppress symptoms instead of listening to what the symptom is trying to communicate. At HOPE we do our own work because that makes us better practitioners and humans. We meet weekly as a community of healers and support one another in our own daily body/mind/spirit well-being management. We are not diagnosis and pathology-focused. The model challenges us to reflect on what factors make us fully human and then to cultivate those factors. We honor each patient's core innate self-regulating intelligence.
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Here is a video of the founder of HOPE Integrative Psychiatry, Dr Omid Naim, explaining the approach:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ5nySPtGCg&ab_channel=LAMPS-LosAngelesMedicinalPlantSociety
"A nervous system accustomed to experiencing and releasing stress is healthier than a nervous system burdened with an ongoing, if not accumulating, level of stress. Children who are encouraged to attend to their instinctual responses are rewarded with a lifelong legacy of health and vigor!" Peter Levine, "Trauma Through a Child's Eyes.
It is never too late for adults either! Meditation, yoga, breath work, tai chi or qi gong, creative movement, activities in nature--all help to integrate the brain bottom-up. Emotional regulation is not possible from an exclusively top-down approach. The soma is always willing to welcome us home, if we allow it.