Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

This week on MIA Radio, we interview Kelli Foulkrod. Kelli is the owner of the Organic Mental Health Center.  She is a therapist, yoga teacher, and mental health paradigm shifter based in Austin, Texas.  For the past 15 years, Kelli has worked in the mental health field and practised yoga. She has been integrating yoga and the healing arts into traditional psychotherapy for over eight years and is passionate about offering holistic mental health treatment options.  

With many years experience in an academic research setting, Kelli bridges the gap between science and spirituality.  Kelli has experience serving clients populations of pregnant and postpartum women, grief and loss, psychosis, homelessness, substance abuse, teens, couples, and groups.  She offers individual, couples, and group psychotherapy services in addition to yoga therapy sessions, workshops, and retreats.

In the episode we discuss:

How Kelli started her journey as a psychology undergraduate at the University of Texas and working in clinical and academic research.

How working in a neuroscience laboratory resulted in internal conflict and led Kelli to interest in and research into alternative modalities alongside her psychology studies.

How Kelli experienced first hand the approaches that pharmaceutical manufacturers used when running clinical trials.

That Kelli felt that modern psychology neglects the body and she started to practise yoga and meditation alongside studying for her masters degree in clinical psychology.

That, to Kelli, modern mental health therapy feels egotistical and narcissistic and that she was resistant to becoming a clinical therapist.

How people are hungry for alternatives but there are so few other options that people continue to get involved with mainstream medicine.

The profound changes that occur when becoming parents and why this might lead to mental health difficulties.

How we have lost touch with community and social connections that existed when we lived as tribal cultures.

How shamanic ceremony and tradition can be understood and utilised in response to emotional distress.

Relevant links:

The Organic Mental Health Centre

The Organic Mental Health Centre (Facebook)

Yoga for depression - the research

To get in touch with us email: podcasts@madinamerica.com

© Mad in America 2018