To accurately diagnose and successfully treat mental health/brain health conditions, we perform a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation that involves taking a 360-degree look at the whole person.
The Amen Clinics Method represents a true paradigm shift in terms of psychiatric evaluations. It is based on groundbreaking brain imaging research showing that mental health issues are in fact brain health issues. At Amen Clinics, we have built the world’s largest database of functional brain scans related to how people think, feel, and behave. Our brain imaging work has completely disrupted how we evaluate, diagnose, and treat our patients.
Contact UsPsychiatry is the only medical field that does NOT look at the organ it treats. Think about it, if you have crushing heart pain, your doctor will scan your heart. But if you have crushing depression, no one will ever look at your brain. As a general rule, psychiatry continues to be practiced the same way it was over 100 years ago. Too often, patients will spend months or even years going through several healthcare professionals and multiple prescriptions before they find relief—if at all. Treatment success rates have not improved in decades, even though technology and science have progressed dramatically. Amen Clinics is different because it looks at your brain utilizing functional imaging tools. This allows our clinicians to evaluate the root cause of your symptoms to make an accurate diagnosis and put you on a personalized plan to feel better faster.
Personalized Precision Psychiatry
At Amen Clinics, we understand that no two people are alike, and no two brains are alike. Based on the findings of your psychiatric evaluation, our doctors will provide you with a personalized treatment plan to address your individual symptoms and optimize your brain health. We use the least toxic, most effective solutions that are proven to produce higher than average success rates. This may include a combination of the following:
This approach has proven successful in treating people with a variety of conditions, including:
Reframing mental health as brain health changes everything.
Ready to learn more? Contact a care coordinator today!
Contact UsUnderstanding the 4 Circles of a whole life (biological, psychological, social, and spiritual influences)
At Amen Clinics, we take a balanced and all-encompassing approach to assessment and healing. As part of our psychiatric evaluation process, we look at the following 4 Circles, all of which can have a meaningful impact on your mental health/brain health.
How can we know what is going on inside your brain unless we look? The brain imaging technology we use at Amen Clinics is called SPECT and it tells us 3 important things:
• Areas of the brain that work well.
• Areas of the brain that don’t work hard enough.
• Areas of the brain that work too hard.
SPECT brain scans provide extremely valuable insight. They connect the dots between your brain function, behaviors and symptoms, which helps our doctors create an individualized treatment plan that is effectively targeted to meet your needs.
Our brain imaging work has also helped identify patterns in the brain that are associated with mental health conditions. It shows that mental illnesses are NOT simple or single disorders. One size does NOT fit all. Treatment that works for one person won’t work for everybody, and it could even make you worse!
Brain scans can reveal damage from head trauma, even if you never blacked out and were never diagnosed with a concussion. Head injuries put you at greater risk for anxiety and depression, ADD/ADHD, PTSD, addiction, and memory problems. But if nobody ever looks at your brain, they can’t know that these conditions are related to past head trauma. To overcome these conditions, you must heal your damaged brain. Psychiatric medications alone won’t work!
With the world’s largest database of functional brain scans — 160,000 and growing — from patients from all 50 states and 120 countries, our physicians are able to more accurately evaluate and diagnose patients. The ability to identify the specific type of a mental health/brain health condition and to see evidence of head trauma (or toxic exposure or infection) also makes our physicians better able to target more effective treatment to your needs.
An important part of the psychiatric evaluation at Amen Clinics involves the use of two neuropsychological tests (Conner’s Continuous Performance Test-II and WebNeuro), which give us additional insights into how your brain functions.
Your overall biological wellness plays a powerful role in your mental health/brain health. For example, if your hormones are out of balance, your mood and mental clarity will be out of balance too—and no amount of antidepressants or stimulants are going to help!
When appropriate, we will order a set of diagnostic lab tests to measure your important health numbers. Depending on your individual needs, we may also order genetic testing or more extensive lab work.
of people report a better quality of life after treatment at Amen Clinics.