Exploring Blind Spots in Conventional and Functional Medicine Psychiatry

A lot of people find their way to my practice because they’ve tried lots of different approaches - meds, supplements, therapy, special diets - and still feel like no one sees the whole picture.

Maybe you’ve felt it too: One psychiatrist says, “This is just depression. Take this pill.” A functional medicine physician says, “It’s all your gut and inflammation. Do this detox, take these herbs, avoid all these foods.”

Meanwhile, you still feel anxious, flat, foggy, or just not like yourself.

You’re not imagining it. Both psychiatry and functional medicine have blind spots. I think it helps to name them clearly — so you can make better choices and trust your own sense of what feels right.

What psychiatry sees clearly — and what it misses

Conventional psychiatry is very good at pattern recognition. It knows that certain clusters of symptoms — sadness, guilt, low energy, insomnia, appetite changes — tend to respond to certain medications or therapies. It knows how to triage risk quickly: if you’re suicidal, hallucinating, manic, or deeply unsafe, psychiatry has powerful tools to help. That’s real, and I deeply respect it - and also work primarily within that realm in my hospital work.

But mainstream psychiatry often stops at the surface. It asks, “What diagnosis fits this symptom pattern?”  but rarely asks, “Why is this happening in this person, in this body, at this time in their life?”

 It doesn’t always have the time or training to look deeper for hidden drivers like:

• Chronic low-grade inflammation

• Autoimmune flares or thyroid shifts

• Iron or B12 deficiency

• Mold exposure or toxins

• Lyme or other tickborne infections

• Histamine intolerance or mast cell activation

• Gut dysbiosis or poor digestion

• Sleep apnea or hidden sleep disorders

  
  

If these deeper stressors are never addressed, a person can end up feeling or being diagnosed as treatment-resistant — when the truth is, maybe there hasn't been a more nuanced assessment.

What functional and integrative care sees clearly — and what it sometimes misses

Functional medicine came along, in part, because people were frustrated with shallow answers. I know that is what drew me to functional and integrative medicine. It asks better questions: Could this anxiety be coming from inflammation? Could this depression be linked to gut health or nutrient depletion? Could chronic stress and trauma be keeping the nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight?

This lens can be transformative and empowering. Many people who felt dismissed by quick prescriptions find real relief when they work on their terrain: changing food, healing the gut, balancing hormones, lowering inflammation, supporting the nervous system, or treating mold or infections.

But functional medicine has pitfalls too. It can swing so far toward root causes that it forgets how deeply helpful psychiatric tools can be — especially when symptoms are severe. Some functional clinics order piles of tests that are expensive and focusing on perfect lab numbers instead of focusing on what really changes daily life.

And sometimes, functional medicine over-medicalizes normal human pain: grief, loneliness, existential crisis, the ache of living in an overwhelming world. Not every mental health issue needs a protocol. Sometimes what is best is care, community, time, and a safe place to process.

What I’ve learned: there’s no either/or

In my experience, true healing means not picking sides. I'm a both/and person in the field of psychiatry. This means knowing when psychiatry’s tools save lives — and when it’s time to ask deeper terrain questions. It means knowing when to lean on medications, and when to help someone safely taper if they’re ready.

It also means remembering that lab tests and prescriptions aren’t enough if we forget the human parts: safety, meaning, relationships, nervous system patterns, old stories we carry in our bodies.

For me, the real art is helping people answer:

• Am I safe enough right now to go deeper?

• What hidden stressors or conditions might be making this harder?

• What’s the next step that doesn’t overwhelm me?

• How do I care for my mind, body, and life in a way that feels doable and kind?

If you feel stuck — it’s not you

If you’ve felt brushed aside by psychiatry or buried under complicated protocols in functional medicine, please know this: it’s not because you did something wrong. It’s because our systems — and our physicians, like all humans — have blind spots. No single model holds the whole truth. There is nuance.

You deserve care that sees your mind, body, history, and context — not just a symptom checklist or a pile of lab results.

You deserve people willing to ask why, to notice what’s been missed, and to bring the best of science and real human presence into the room with you.

Sometimes that looks like medication. Sometimes it’s changing what you eat, where you live, how you live, or how you rest. Sometimes it’s doing the brave work of tending to old wounds. Often, it’s all of these, step by step, at a pace that works for you.

***Please note that I will be seeing patients again starting January 2026. To join the waitlist, sign up here.

A kind reminder: This blog post is designed as a general guide. This is not a substitute for personalized medical advice, nor is a patient-physician relationship established in this blog post.