The Deeper Reason You Feel This Way
You have tried to feel better. You have taken the medications, followed your doctor’s advice, and pushed through the exhaustion. But the depression keeps coming back. The anxiety never fully lifts. The fatigue follows you into every room.
Your mental health symptoms are connected to what is happening inside your body. Inflammation, nutritional deficiencies, metabolic dysfunction, hormonal shifts, and gut imbalances can all drive the way you feel every single day. When those physical root causes go unaddressed, no amount of medication management will give you your life back.
You Deserve More Than Symptom Management
The conventional approach to mental health is built around managing symptoms. You describe how you feel, you receive a diagnosis, and you are given a prescription. When that prescription does not work well enough, you try another one. The cycle continues, and the underlying reasons why your brain is struggling are never uncovered and addressed. This approach fails a lot of people. It may have failed you.
What most people are never told is that depression, anxiety, fatigue, and insomnia are often the body’s warning signals that something physical is out of balance. It is not just plain wrong to keep treating these signals with more medications without asking why they are happening. It is a missed opportunity for real healing.
Meet Dr. Mary Braud
Dr. Mary Braud has been practicing psychiatry since 2005. She has sat with patients who were exhausted, discouraged, and running out of hope after years of conventional treatment. She felt that frustration alongside them, and it drove her to go further.
She completed her certification through the Institute for Functional Medicine in 2014, trained in the Matthews Protocol for disruptive mood disorders, and completed specialized clinical training in ketogenic diets for mental health in 2023. She has personally lived a low-carbohydrate lifestyle since 2017 because she believes in the power of metabolic health firsthand.
She is not here to just manage your symptoms. She is here to help you understand, address, and reclaim your well-being.
How We Work Together
Functional Psychiatry and Lab-Guided Care
We begin with a thorough evaluation that goes far beyond a standard psychiatric intake. We gather your full history and order specialized laboratory tests to look for the physical imbalances that may be driving your symptoms, including chronic inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, gut dysfunction, and hormonal shifts. Once we understand what is actually happening in your body, we build a personalized plan. That plan may include conventional treatments when they are appropriate, but it will always prioritize real food, targeted supplements, and lifestyle changes that support your brain from the inside out.
Therapeutic Nutritional Ketosis
Emerging research shows that many mental illnesses are connected to how well your brain cells produce and use energy. When the tiny engines inside your cells, called mitochondria, are not functioning well, your brain struggles. That can show up as depression, brain fog, anxiety, and fatigue. A therapeutic ketogenic diet is one of the most powerful tools available to restore brain energy. By shifting your body to run on ketones instead of glucose, your brain receives a cleaner, more efficient fuel source. Many patients experience meaningful improvements in mood, clarity, and energy. Because this approach requires careful medical supervision, especially when psychiatric medications are involved, Dr. Braud guides every patient through the process with close clinical oversight.
The Matthews Protocol for DMDD
For children, teenagers, and young adults dealing with explosive outbursts, intense irritability, and impulsive behavior, the conventional answer is often heavy anti-psychotic medications with serious side effects. The Matthews Protocol offers a more targeted approach. Developed by pioneering psychiatrist Dr. Dan Matthews, this protocol uses medications that calm overactive neurons in the emotional center of the brain, without blocking dopamine or causing the harmful side effects of anti-psychotics. Patients become better able to tolerate frustration, de-escalate more quickly, and over time, many are able to come off medication support entirely as the brain builds healthier patterns of response.
Ready to Find Your Answers?
This is not about managing your symptoms for the rest of your life. It is about understanding what your body has been trying to tell you and finally giving it the answer it needs.
Take the first step toward a holistic, root-cause approach to your mental health. Let’s uncover what is really going on and build a plan to get your life back.
Movement Is My Favorite Medicine
Healing is not only found in a lab result or a supplement protocol. It lives in the body, in rhythm, in the simple act of moving in a way that feels good. Of all the tools I have encountered in my years of practice, movement remains one of the most powerful, and dance has always been the form that calls to me most.
There is something about music, rhythm, and the freedom to move your whole body in your own unique way that reaches places that clinical interventions simply cannot. It is joyful. It is communal. And the science behind it is undeniable: movement reduces inflammation, regulates mood, supports metabolic health, and builds resilience in the nervous system.
That is why I became a certified Groove facilitator.
Groove is a group dance experience unlike anything you've tried before.
There are no choreographed steps to memorize, no right or wrong way to move, and no experience required. Your facilitator unites the room with a shared rhythm, and from there, every person dances it in their own way. The music travels from slow, meditative grooves to heart-pumping cardio beats, nurturing your body, mind, heart, and soul in a single class. If you can move, you can Groove.
I offer live Groove classes via Zoom on Monday mornings at 9:00 AM Mountain Time and Wednesday evenings at 7:00 PM Mountain Time. Classes are offered as a love offering, meaning you contribute what you are able. Please add your name and email to the waitlist so I can notify you when I offer classes.