My Values and Your Expectations
People Over Paperwork
I work hard to minimize the intrusion of organizational, insurance, and government bureaucracies into treatment. You work with me directly. All communications are with me, and all decisions related to your treatment are made directly with you.
Relationality
My first goal is to create a safe space which supports your healing and growth. This kind of relationship takes time to develop. I have to earn your trust over time by treating you in a consistently respectful and caring manner.
Patient Autonomy
Your treatment belongs to you. It does not belong to me or anyone else. Your life, your treatment, and your decisions are your own. Ultimately, you decide whether you want treatment, and what kinds of treatments you want. My role is to support you, provide information, and explore your options with you.
Privacy
Your treatment is your business. Your treatment information belongs to you alone. You decide whether to share it with anyone else, including other medical professionals, family, insurance, or employers. The only exceptions are legal requirements that apply to situations of a threat to the life of yourself or someone else, or disclosures that a judge may order.
Whole Person Healing
When it comes to healing, medicines are often part of the answer, but they are never the whole solution. Good treatment involves consideration of everything that might help, including biological, psychological, social, and sometimes spiritual interventions.
Long Term Success
The human brain is the most complicated physical thing in existence. Healing is sometimes fast, but usually gradual. My goal is to help you steadily make progress toward your goals. In mental health, progress is success.
Meaning Over Triumph
Life is not easy for anyone. It is full of ups and downs, full of compromises and roads-not-taken. This is as true in the world of mental health as everywhere else. My goal is not to help you reach perfection or become someone else, but to help you have a good life as your authentic self.
My Relationship with Insurance Companies
I do not contract with any insurance company. This makes treatment more expensive for you, but I believe it makes it more effective in the long run for most people. Why? Because insurance companies do not exist to help you maintain your health. They exist to get as much money out of you as possible, and to pay as little for your healthcare as possible in return. Because of this, the insurance industry has developed legalized ways of confusing and mistreating both their customers (you) and medical professionals (me). They suck up our resources and our time in the futile attempt to get financial support for good treatment, and gradually suck up the time, attention, and energy we would otherwise have for your treatment.
My Philosophy of Treatment
I believe that psychiatric illnesses are real medical illnesses. At root, this means they are biological. But psychiatric illnesses are not just biological. They are psychological and social as well. They affect the whole person. So treatment has to address the whole person too. Therefore I am open to working with medications, over-the-counter supplements, talk therapy, exercise, prayer and meditation, support groups, and lots of other treatments. The way we match those treatments to your needs is the art of psychiatry, and how we do it depends on your priorities, your values, and your needs.
There is no ‘one size fits all’ program of treatment. We now have a lot of research on many types of psychiatric treatments that are proven to work. But what we don’t know is the right mix of treatments for you and your situation — which medicines, which kinds of talk therapy, which kinds of social supports, and so on. For that, we have to work together to find out. In a sense, we have to write the book of your treatment together, as we learn together from your experience. (See my book Science Over Stigma for more details about all of this.)
Course of Treatment
People start treatment at many different places. Below is a sequence of treatment in the order that it usually evolves. But where you start treatment depends on your current circumstances, and where you end treatment depends on how far you want to go. Regardless, many of these stages can overlap in practice.
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Emergency
In this phase of treatment, someone’s life or ability to function are under threat. Treatment usually involves safely getting that person to emergency treatment in the ER or a psychiatric hospital.
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Stabilization
People in this phase of treatment are dealing with some severe symptoms that are making it hard to function, like severe depression, substance problems, or severe anxiety. The goal of this phase is to reduce those symptoms and get them under control. In this phase of treatment, it is important not to overwhelm the person by pushing them to do too much too fast.
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Remission
Here, the goal is to eliminate all symptoms of the illness for an extended time. This phase of treatment can overlap with the others below. Also, it is important to remember that we cannot always get rid of every effect of a chronic illness. But we can get closer and closer to the goal.
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Recovery
In this phase, people gradually rebuild their lives. The goal is to gradually resume activities and responsibilities that are part of a full and happy life, but to resume those activities without triggering relapse. This has to be done in a careful way, using the principle of “do it, but don’t overdo it.”
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Health Maintenance and Relapse Prevention
Here the goal is to nurture better mental and physical health over time. This makes relapse less and less likely. But it is good to remember that relapse is never impossible, and that people can have a relapse even when doing everything right.
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Relational and Vocational Functioning
In this phase, we are not focused as much on symptoms. Instead, we are dealing with the effects of childhood adversity, current grief, stress, and conflict, and the challenges of the upcoming stage of development. Dealing with these things improves relationships, decreases stress, and makes people less likely to relapse to illness in the future.
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Long Term Growth and Resilience
This phase of treatment involves the search for meaning, purpose, and spirituality. It involves seeking to develop fully as a human being, coming to terms with the limitations of life and illness, and expressing our talents and sense of purpose in everyday life.
How Treatment Works in Practice
After the first evaluation (60 minutes), we will meet for regular appointments (45 minutes). We will talk in an open-ended way and focus on whatever seems most important to your mental health and goals in that session. My goal will be to get to know you, and to offer questions and options. At the end of the session, we will make a plan together. I will not tell you what to do, but I will have ideas and thoughts about how to understand your situation, and what to do about it. We will discuss your ideas and then mine, and finally make a plan based on your final decision.
Conditions
Conditions I treat
- Major depression and bipolar disorder
- Anxiety, including panic attacks and generalized anxiety
- Trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder
- Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Personality disorders
- Grief and loss
- Relationship problems
- Search for meaning and purpose
Conditions I might not treat
The following conditions often require the approach of a whole team or sub-specialists. Since I am only one person and not a specialist in everything, I can only treat them under special circumstances:
- Schizophrenia
- Schizoaffective disorder
- Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa
- Severe substance use disorders
- Severe hoarding
- Dementia
- Severe borderline personality disorder
About Dr. Morehead
I have practiced psychiatry since 1998. I have always provided psychotherapy as well as medications and second opinions in my medical practice. I have enjoyed teaching and supervising throughout my career, including times as a Psychiatry Residency Director at the Menninger Clinic and Tufts Medical Center. I have always been a generalist, someone who is obsessed with putting together the whole picture of what a human being is — and needs — through the course of mental illness. My three main interests within psychiatry are neuroscience, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and spirituality.
I am Board Certified in General Psychiatry (ABPN) and Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry (UCNS), and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (DLFAPA).
You can read more about my books, essays, and talks on the Writing & Speaking side of this site. A full curriculum vitae is available on request.
Getting Started
Please begin by reading the office policies and fee schedule, which explain appointments, cancellations, refills, insurance, confidentiality, and payment. New patients complete and sign the intake paperwork online before the first appointment.
To ask about openings or schedule a first appointment, write to [email protected].