Psychiatry and Comprehensive Mental Health Treatment

Dr. Wendy Oliver-Pyatt completed her training as a psychiatrist at NYU-Bellevue Hospital where she served as a Chief Resident.  Over the years, her training and experiences involve direct patient care, and leadership across multiple levels of care and treatment modalities, including inpatient psychiatry, residential addiction programs (where she served as a medical director), forming PACT PROGRAMS (Programs for Assertive Community Treatment), emergency room osychiatry, public outpatient care and private outpatient care. In 2001 she became the State of Nevada, Division of Mental Health and Disability Services Medical Director, where she oversaw  all aspects of mental health treatment in the state of Nevada, for which she received Senatorial Recognition. She was the first woman and youngest person to ever assume this role.   In 2003 Dr. Oliver-Pyatt founded her first Residential Eating Disorder Treatment program; Center for Hope of the Sierras This program expanded to add in Partial Hospitalization Care and Transitional Living.  Later, in 2008, Dr. Oliver-Pyatt went on to found Oliver-Pyatt Centers, and Clementine, both are nationally and internationally recognized as top programs in the field of eating disorders.

Among the distinguishing features of Dr. Oliver-Pyatt’s treatment approach:

Being Available:

You will notice a high level of responsivity. You will not be frustrated by wasted time trying to communicate with providers, get help in a crisis, schedule follow up and adjust treatment as needed for your benefit.   Dr. Oliver-Pyatt truly cares about you and your experience, and wants you to feel connected, heard, and valued.

Passion for her work and compassion for your experiences:

You will be treated with the upmost of compassion, respect and dignity. Dr. Oliver-Pyatt and her team feel honored to engage with patients in the deep and meaningful work of self-exploration, self-awareness and growth. Dr. Oliver-Pyatt and her team take responsibility for each person they are working with, and will be there for you as you work on your healing process, helping you to to manage stress and change and complicated life events, and to enhance your overall well-being and internal peace.

Deep level of knowledge and experience:

Dr. Oliver-Pyatt trained at NYU-Bellevue hospital, where she experienced an in depth treatment psychodynamic an pharmacologic training and worked in a vast array of treatment settings.  Following her residency she went on to become an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at University of Nevada and Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center.  She has in depth knowledge and experience of complex psychopharmacology, while also having extensive success at guiding patients through complex psychological and behavioral struggles.  Her attuned approach, intuitive foundation, understanding of psychodynamics, and ability to develop meaningful treatment interventions and protocols is grounded in 20 + years of experience, extensive training, and working with dynamic teams to help patients with the most complex forms of mental health struggles.

Thought Leader:

Dr. Oliver-Pyatt is a well-known clinician in the field of eating disorders.  She has served on the Board of Directors for the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, was the Chairman of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (which has now merged with the National Eating Disorder Association), and has presented at national and international conferences for over 20 years.

Dr. Oliver-Pyatt is a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, a Fellow of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, and is a Certified Eating Disorder Supervisor.  With regard to her eating disorder treatment, she is able to work with you across multiple domains ranging from individual therapy, psychiatric/medication management, nutrition therapy and family therapy & psychoeducation.

Her ability to provide care for all forms of mental health conditions across multiple domains allows your care to be far more cohesive and less scattered.  Dr. Oliver-Pyatt will collaborate with you in the development of a comprehensive treatment protocol to assure that all of your needs are met, across the biological, psychological, social/spiritual domains.  She match you with other critical providers who she has relationships with and trusts, when indicated, (including life coaches if indicated),  and will coordinate your treatment, so that your care will be comprehensive, cohesive and holistic.  Dr. Oliver-Pyatt and her team will work tirelessly on your behalf to assure that you are provided with the care and responsiveness that can help you move in the direction of healing, self-empowerment, and creating meaning, and deepening connections in your life.

I think the answer about what is different about integrative medicine, functional medicine, and complimentary medicine should be really replaced with the thought of what is common among these three sorts of medicine. All three are focused on diving into underlying factors that mediate illnesses and underlying variables that can be adjusted or added to care for patients that will modify their, the patient’s, uh, healing trajectory.

In traditional medicine, a patient presents with a symptom. And the idea of the medical intervention is to get rid of the symptom. A more traditional medicine does not necessarily center on diving into what is the root cause of the symptom and what are the mediators of those root causes that can be adjusted or affected to result in change for the better one thing to maybe consider as hemoglobin a one C a person’s hemoglobin A1C may be slightly elevated, and the person may be considered pre-diabetic and or diabetic with type two diabetes and put on Metformin. So that’s getting rid of the symptom of diabetes. Addressing the underlying factors may involve taking, look at the person’s lifestyle, their stress level, their, their movement pattern, and how they nourish their body period. So we’ve seen with the issue of type two diabetes, that movement can really impact hemoglobin a one C levels furthering the complexity of this is the misguided interpretations of what sort of counts as meaningful movement.

Integrative Medicine

With a more holistic – integrative – complimentary – functional medicine view of the situation would be to have a whole picture view of the person, the bio-psychosocial variables and even their psychological experience of movement and internalized expectations about what meaningful movement actually is. So in this case, we may engage with a patient and really take time to consider their lifestyle, their pleasurable activities, their stress, and their responses to movement, because if we can get underneath some of these issues and help the person reduce the stress, take more time cooking, nourishing meals, and starting to engage in a form of movement that’s realistic for that person in such a case without mandating strict dietary regimens, without taking medication, we can see an impact on hemoglobin A1C.  These examples go on and on. They can relate to mental health issues as well, such as depression, and looking at underlying variables, such as thyroid function to GI conditions, to things like headaches. So in all of these forms of medicine, we’re looking deeper into the issue. We’re looking for answers that go beyond symptom reduction or simply taking a pill.

Functional Medicine

With functional medicine, we might dive into underlying nutritional deficiencies or biochemical toxicities, or mal-adaptations or deficiencies that can drive forward. The disease process. One might consider things such as vitamin D deficiency as related to higher risk of psychosis. in complimentary medicine, we might think more of other supportive interventions that can reduce stress or improve quality of life, or potentially help with pain management. Such examples might include acupuncture, yoga, massage, and other modalities of care that are not traditionally thought of in a typical hospital visit.

Complimentary Medicine

Complimentary medicine is similar to all of the above and may involve the use of herbals, such as for example, st. John’s ward in the treatment of mild depression, there a lot of crossover between these different forms of medicine, but the underlying factors, that’s common to all of these is to dive deeper and to understand underlying mediators and the more subjective quality of the person’s life and how we can intervene, whether it’s through nutraceuticals, adjusting thyroid levels, addressing stressors, reducing stressors, or increasing pleasure of all activities, such as just downtime, stress management, massage, or acupuncture.

All of these things really can make a difference in somebody’s life. And it’s why I find it necessary to spend enough time with patients to really understand the many things that have landed them in my office. On that particular day, they come to see you as a patient engages with you. They’re really turning to you for guidance and for a new direction. And it’s not just my obligation, but my pleasure to dive deep into the variables and develop a treatment plan that is expanded beyond what is typically thought of in traditional Western medicine. And the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The use of psychotropic medication can be done in combination with nutraceutical interventions, thyroid adjustment, etc. So it’s important to not think of one as exclusive of the other.

A question we commonly get is “Where can I find comprehensive mental health treatment near me?” One of the major benefits of working with Wendy is that comprehensive mental health doctors can serve you wherever you are through telemedicine. We can combine integrative and functional medicine together to create a holistic plan just for you. Contact us to get started!

We wanted to be sure that you understand some things about insurance as it relates to your care.  Dr. Oliver-Pyatt is not a contracted provider with insurance companies, at this time.  The reasons for this are extensive, but suffice to say that after 20 years in the field, it is important to her that a care be independently determined, based on each person’s unique needs.  Additionally, the time that it takes to go through the reimbursement process, and the minimal allowances often imposed upon by insurance, precludes her from providing the type of clinical care that is integral to her approach and philosophy, which includes care being integrated, holistic, and thorough.  Dr. Oliver-Pyatt’s staff will be able to provide you with the paperwork that may (or may not) result in reimbursement.  This does not guarantee reimbursement. In some occasional instances, insurance companies do have workable out of network benefits, that may warrant an opportunity for Dr. Oliver-Pyatt to bill directly. It is important that you speak to your provider and understand those terms, as it may result in an gap between what is billed for and owed,  and what is covered.  If an out of network arrangement is possible, please let us know the circumstances, and we can explore this together.