Many people think of chiropractic care as nothing more than a spinal adjustment. While that is the core of our therapeutic interventions, there are a number of other ways we restore patients to health.
I employ lifestyle and nutrition interventions with almost every patient I see; and when you include the ability to utilize blend custom herbal formulae as well as acupuncture and other modalities, the scope of a chiropractic physician's interventions are wide-ranging indeed. The multidisciplinary skillset of the modern chiropractor makes us unique and uniquely valuable to patients suffering from chronic diseases.
People suffering from depression are frequent visitors to my doorstep because, like most chronic disorders, depression is poorly managed by mainstream medicine. Pharmaceuticals -- medicine's primary response to depression -- really don't work that well, especially over the long term. Prozac and the other SSRI's are based on a scientifically-unsound model of depression; and while more recent innovations, such as ketamine, can in certain cases be more effective than an SSRI, medical management of depression largely remains a crapshoot.
Which is why I have made it a point to study the myriad causes of depression and the most effective drug-free therapeutics for people suffering with this disorder. And what the research shows -- and what any evidence-based doctor should realize -- is that there are many ways to successfully address the problem of depression, ways that are far more effective than taking a drug. In this vein, I also make frequent use of the clinical social workers and psychologists who are truly skilled at diagnosing and managing depression without drugs.
I was recently asked to give a presentation on this topic to the annual convention of the Connecticut Society of Medical Assistants. As always, I immensely enjoyed talking before this group. They are interested, animated, participatory and questioning, which are the best qualities for any audience to have.
At the request of several of my patients and others, I am posting the slides I used for this lecture. While I try to pack as much information as I can on my slides, much of the content of the lecture is necessarily lost. Please contact me if you would like more information on any of the topics I cover.