Most of us were taught that serious mental illness is a problem of brain chemistry, corrected by the right medication. That model has helped many people — but when it doesn’t work, it can leave families stranded. They are told their loved one is “treatment resistant”, as though they had failed. A growing body of science points to something the old model overlooked: the brain is the body’s most energy-hungry organ, and mental health is deeply tied to metabolism — how our cells produce and use energy.

Drawing on his clinical work and the emerging research, Dr. Matthew Bernstein will explain, in plain language, how metabolic health shapes the brain; what interventions like nutrition, ketogenic therapy, exercise, and sleep can and cannot do; and how this widens the toolkit for recovery — including the careful, collaborative question of when medication helps and when it can be safely reduced. This is an honest and hopeful look at a wider horizon, and what it means for the families living it.

Matthew Bernstein, MD, is a psychiatrist with twenty-five years of experience and a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is Chief Medical Officer of Ellenhorn and Founding Partner, CEO, and Medical Director of Accord Mental Health, a residential program in Arlington, Massachusetts pioneering metabolic approaches to serious mental illness. Trained at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital, he writes and teaches on integrating metabolic psychiatry with careful, collaborative medication management. His commitment to this work is also personal: two of his three sons received a PANS diagnosis (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome), and the family’s own medical odyssey shaped his conviction that psychiatry must look beyond the symptom to the whole person.

We hope you can join us on October 29th!

Co-sponsored with the Department of Psychology and the Centre for Clinical Research in Health (CCRH), Concordia University