Kim Tubbs is a Board Certified Family Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner trained through Vanderbilt University. She specializes in treating children, adolescents, and adults with a variety of issues, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, mood disorders, behavioral issues, trauma histories, autism spectrum disorders, and ADHD without the use of stimulants.

With over 24 years of experience in the field of psychiatry, Kim came to realize that medication wasn’t resolving the underlying issues. While medications can be helpful for a period of time, she has repeatedly found that patients frequently relapse, requiring higher doses of medication, additional medications, and develop increasing side effects from medications.

This started her journey and research into holistic psychiatry. Over the last 4 years she has been dedicated to the study of nutrition, mindfulness, yoga, and ayurveda, as well as new research in the field of traditional psychiatry and pharmacology. Using a holistic and integrative approach, many of her patients are able to drastically reduce medication or get off of medication altogether.

Kim now combines her knowledge of integrative and traditional medicine. She works synergistically with her patients to uncover any biological or thought issues that may be at the root of the problems and together they develop the most holistic plan for achieving wellness for the patient’s Whole Life.

What is holistic psychiatry?
Holistic psychiatry is a form of healing that considers the whole person – body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Holistic psychiatry uses conventional, nutritional, and functional medicine, as well as mind-body/energy medicine to restore health as naturally and efficiently as possible.

In holistic psychiatry, we seek to identify the root cause of symptoms. Labs are drawn. Environmental influences are examined. Lifestyle and thought patterns are explored. The goal is to get to the source of the symptoms and fix the underlying issues.

Treatment is highly individualized and developed for each patient based on their unique needs. When indicated, medications may be used in combination with other modalities to optimize well-being and health.

How is holistic psychiatry different?
Traditionally, psychiatry is a very subjective area of medicine. This means you could see one provider and be diagnosed with depression and see another and be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. While there are guidelines for diagnosing (the DSM-V), there are no definitive tests like x-rays, blood tests, or MRI’s that can confirm the condition. Diagnoses are dependent on the patient’s relaying of symptoms and the provider matching those symptoms to a checklist. If the right questions aren’t asked, the diagnosis may be inaccurate.

In addition, many of the symptoms of mental illness are the same symptoms of physical disorders including food allergies, heavy metal toxicity, nutritional deficiencies, and hormonal imbalances.

For example, a patient may present with the follow symptoms:

• Fatigue
• Disturbed sleep
• Lack of motivation
• Change in weight
• Sadness
• Diminished ability to think

These symptoms all meet the diagnostic criteria of MDD (major depressive disorder). However, these symptoms also meet the criteria for thyroid disorders and for vitamin D deficiency. How do we know which is the root cause? In traditional psychiatry, the symptoms would be treated with antidepressants. In holistic psychiatry, we want to know the root cause of the symptoms. Using conventional and integrative laboratory work, motivational interviewing, and intuitive understanding, holistic psychiatry works to fix the root cause, rather than just treating the symptoms.