Your preferences dictate how you are treated. We offer both therapy and medication management to ensure every unique patient has the tools they need to thrive!

Learn about our Nurse Practitioner Dorothea Jattan, PMHNP-BC

How do medications help?

Our brain is the command center of our body. Think of the neural pathways in our brains as streets. Chemical messengers in our brains, called neurotransmitters are like drivers in cars. They carry messages to other places in our brains and bodies, such as neurons, muscles, and glands, telling them what to do or what not to do.

From birth throughout our lives, the drivers, cars, and streets in our brain are impacted by our genetics, diets, environments, and experiences. Each brain is unique because of this. Like any part of our bodies, sometimes things aren’t working properly.

Maybe our brain from birth couldn’t produce enough drivers to deliver specific messages. Or perhaps our brain has experienced trauma and certain streets in our brain have so many potholes, no car can drive down them. What can we do?

Sometimes, EMDR and other therapies can help our brains repair their neural pathways. The brain can fill the potholes or create a new street around the old one so drivers can deliver messages where they need to. But sometimes our brains can’t make repairs, even with supportive therapies.

Medications help our brains recruit the extra drivers it needs to function appropriately. Or it can stop drivers when we’ve recruited too many. We may only need medication for a limited time, until our brain is able to adapt and regulate the number of drivers itself. Other times, our brain was never able to produce enough drivers, produced way too many drivers, or has been altered by disease, injury, or trauma. In these instances, medication may be necessary for a short time, a long time, or a lifetime.

Learn about our Nurse Practitioner Dorothea Jattan, PMHNP-BC