OM DENNE EPISODE
In this episode, host James Maskell sits down with Kirkland Newman, founder of MindHealth360 and Executive Director of the IMMH (Integrative Medicine for Mental Health) conference.
Newman's path into integrative mental health began with her own experience of severe postpartum depression after both of her pregnancies. Offered only antidepressants by her psychiatrist — with no explanation for why she was suddenly experiencing panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, and depression — she sought answers from an OBGYN, an endocrinologist, two GPs, and multiple psychiatrists, none of whom investigated further. Her own research led her to hormone specialists, a functional-medicine-oriented nutritionist, and eventually to Sarah Gottfried's work on adrenal and HPA-axis dysfunction. She discovered she had significant hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies (low omega-3s, B vitamins, vitamin D), heavy metal toxicity, and gluten intolerance — none of which had ever been screened for, despite clear symptoms including cardiac ectopic beats that went uninvestigated for a thyroid cause.
Frustrated that this root-cause approach wasn't part of mainstream care, Newman founded MindHealth360 to provide free resources and a global practitioner database, launched a podcast interviewing leading integrative mental health practitioners, and eventually took over the IMMH conference from its founder, Dr. Shaw. Under her leadership, the conference has grown from 50 attendees in 2009 to around 2,000 in-person and virtual attendees today.
Maskell and Newman discuss the shifting landscape of psychiatry — a groundswell of patient-driven demand for root-cause approaches meeting growing frustration among practitioners with the limits of psych medications — along with the broader convergence of psychiatry and neurology into what some are calling "brain medicine." Newman outlines her framework for sustainable mental health treatment across three domains: the biochemical (hormones, nutrition, gut health, infections, inflammation, genetics), the psychosocial/spiritual (relationships, chronic stress, trauma, ACEs), and the lifestyle/behavioral (sunlight, exercise, sleep).
The episode closes with a preview of this year's IMMH conference, taking place October 8–11 in San Diego, featuring speakers including Robert Lustig, Bessel van der Kolk, Dick Schwartz, Robin Carhart-Harris, Dale Bredesen, Kat Toups, Richard Horowitz, and James Greenblatt, with tracks spanning trauma, addiction, eating disorders, hormones, sleep, neurodegeneration, and psychoneuroimmunology, and up to 40–45 CE credits available.
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About the Guest:
Kirkland Newman is the founder of MindHealth360, a free global resource platform and practitioner database for integrative mental health, and Executive Director of the IMMH (Integrative Medicine for Mental Health) conference. Her own experience with severe postpartum depression — and the lack of answers from conventional medicine — led her on a personal healing journey into functional medicine, hormonal health, and nutritional psychiatry. She has since built IMMH into one of the leading conferences in the field, growing it from 50 attendees to roughly 2,000, and hosts a podcast interviewing leading integrative practitioners in mental health from around the world.
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