Michelle
Indianer, D.O.
250 Blossom Hill Road
Suite 101
Los Gatos, California, 95032
phone (408) 395-4117
fax (408) 395-1441
MindBody Psychiatry and
Health Optimization
MindBody
Psychiatry
is an approach to patient care that looks at the whole
person, also known as Integrative Psychiatry. I like
to use the word "wholistic" rather than the more
common spelling holistic to emphasize a complete
approach without "holes". This is also known as the
Bio-Psycho-Socio-Spiritual Approach to
Psychiatry. This is the only way I know to truly
help a person reach a healthy and satisfying way of
life. Too often medicine is compartmentalized and the
whole person is not truly seen by his or her
physician. I am a second generation Osteopathic
Physician. The modeling I learned
from my father who was a Family Physician and the
perspective I learned in medical school looked at the
whole mindbody connection. My style is to seek ways to
help a patient reach optimum health through looking at
multiple approaches to their care including body based
therapies, conventional "allopathic" medicine, and
nutritional medicine.
I am trained as a General Adult Psychiatrist and
completed a Fellowship in Substance Abuse Treatment. I
worked a few years as the Assistant Unit Chief
of the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Center at
the Palo Alto VA Medical Center. I
obtained my Board Certification in Psychiatry opened
my private practice of Psychiatry in Los Gatos,
California in 1988. From the beginning I have
helped my patients seek optimal health, co-treating
with their general doctor. In the past decade I have
been called upon more often to make suggestions for
more complete diagnostic work ups and general health
care for my patients. It became obvious to me in the
last several years that I needed to address issues of
thyroid disease, adrenal dysfunction and
bioidentical hormone replacement therapy to help
optimize outcomes for healing in my Psychiatric
patients.
Since 2005, I have completed several hundred
hours of CME courses in Anti-Aging and
Functional Medicine. These included advanced
courses in bioidentical hormone replacement (inclucing
sex hormones, thyroid and adrenal homones),
nutrition and supplement use, neurotransmitter
evaluation and use of neurotransmitter precursors, and
other ways of addressing chronic complex diseases.
These intensive courses were through the American Academy of Anti
Aging Medicine, The
Institute for Functional Medicine, and Worldlink
Medical (with Dr. Neal Rouzier).
Anti-Aging Medicine is a relatively new field that is
concerned with expanding a person's healthy life span,
i.e. not just how long but how well you live. Functional
Medicine
is concerned with looking at the factors that
impact your general health. These include "givens"
that can not change like your genetics and
environmental toxins from your past. Functional
medicine tries to impact these given factors with
various interventions including hormone
replacement therapy, diet, and nutritional
supplements. Both of these branches of medicine look
at stress reduction, exercise and maintaining healthy
eating habits. Since 2007, I have incorporated these
factors in my treatment strategies to complement
and enhance my more traditional psychiatric
practice of psychotherapy and conventional psychiatric
medications, and do consultations for patients
BHRT and help with their chronic disease processes.
Another important aspect of health optimization
is looking at Mindbody issues, i.e.
Psychosomatic Medicine as described by Doctor John
Sarno. With all of these approaches I am particularly
well suited to help because of my diverse training in
various forms of psychotherapy, including Psychodrama,
Redicision Therapy (TA/Gestalt), Psychodynamic and
Transpersonal. I am also a certified teacher of the Enneagram,
having recieved training from Helen Palmer, Don
Riso and Russ Hudson.
See my Suggested
Readings
For privacy reasons, I neither send nor receive
information via the internet.