There is no health without mental health.
Mental and emotional wellness are essential for living a happy, fulfilling and productive life.
Mental wellness includes positive self-regard, fulfilling social relationships, meaningful work, productivity, goal achievement, good physical health, and proactive stress management.
Mental health conditions, like depression and anxiety, are not brain-based phenomena. They are a result of multiple factors, including the health of our bodies and brains, our home and work environment, our mindset, personal beliefs and experiences, and our social relationships, among others.
Therefore truly addressing mental health concerns involves taking whole-body, person-centred view.
How I Approach Mental Health Conditions:
Case taking: I am interested in gaining an in-depth understanding of how you are as a person. We spend over 60 minutes together at each appointment to form a therapeutic relationship and make sure we both have a thorough understanding of all the pieces that influence your health.
Diagnoses are valuable they remind us that it’s not because there is something wrong with us. They make us feel less alone. In addition to knowing what is going on with you, I talk with you to understand how the diagnosis occurs in your life.
Uncovering Root Causes: I look at mental health conditions as symptoms, rather than disease. Together we try to understand what biological, psychological, social and environmental factors may be influencing your mood and mental functioning.
Digestion: The digestive system is often at the seat of mental health conditions. We look at the health of your microbiome, and rule out any gut infections, inflammatory gut conditions, like leaky gut, and food sensitivities.
Nutrition: Ensuring that the proper building blocks are in place for optimal mental and emotional health.
Counselling: I have additional training in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Motivational Interviewing.
Stress and Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) Axis: We talk about stress, burnout and how cortisol, the stress hormone may be contributing to your symptoms.
Hormones: Our hormones have the ability to profoundly impact our mood. From our blood sugar, to our stress hormones, to the hormones that impact our fertility and mentstrual cycles, I look and test for signs of hormonal imbalance.
Amino acids and Nutritional Supplementation: To help balance neurotransmitters in the brain.
Mitochondrial Health: Our mitochondria are the energy-generators of our cells. Impaired mitochondrial function in the brain may contribute to mental health symptoms, and chronic inflammation.
Herbal Therapies: Herbs are particularly helpful for improving hormonal, mitochondrial, and neurotransmitter balance, for lowering inflammation, improving stress resilience, and healing the digestive system.
Research: Mental health research is an exciting field. I stay on top of current and emerging therapeutic tools, like heat therapy, mindfulness and self-compassion.
Conditions Treated:
ADD | ADHD | Addictions | Anxiety| Body Image | Bipolar Disorder | Depression | Eating Disorders | OCD| Panic Disorder | PMS | PMDD | PTSD | Self-Criticism | Self-Esteem| Stress Management | Children and Youth
Meet Dr. Talia, ND
Ready to Book?
Click the button below to set up your first appointment.
Download your free copy of The Mood Diet
Join The Good Mood Project: a Facebook mental health community
Mental Health Articles
Estrogen Dominance, Hormone Balance and the Mirena IUD
In response to my very popular article about the Mirena IUD and how that can upset hormone balance, or further an existing imbalance, I talk about a condition called "estrogen dominance" can result in hormonal symptoms, such as PMS, infertility, weight gain and...
All About Naturopathic Medicine, An Educational Talk
In this video I give an education talk to a group of seniors at the Bernard Betel Centre about naturopathic medicine. I discuss our philosophy, education, what kinds of conditions we treat and answer some questions along the way....
Stress + Resilience: Building Your Wheel of Balance
I talk about how to manage stress and promote mental health and emotional wellness through assessing balance in the key areas of your life that promote a healthy mind and body. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxBlgwEMCs4&t=2s Hello, everybody, my name is Dr. Talia...
On Healing Regret
Someone, I think it was Eckhart Tolle, once said that when it comes to mental illness, anxiety is about worry for the future, while depression is concerned with regret for the past. While, I'm not entirely (or even nearly) convinced that this is true, there is little...
Where There Is Mental Illness, There Is Poor Digestion
I'm tired of hearing mental health conditions blamed on a "chemical imbalance". Patients everywhere are being told that their mental health conditions are, literally, "all in their heads". With this diagnosis—often distributed insensitively, and without much attention...
The Gut-Brain Connection
The gut-brain connection has gotten the attention of researchers and functional medical practitioners. I discuss, briefly, what research has shown us in regards to the complex realm of the microbiome and how depression may be a result of inflammation in the brain,...
The Stress-Depression Connection
When our minds are stressed, how do our bodies react? We experience something called "adrenal fatigue" that can closely mimic the symptoms of depression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgl8PtcbAsk Hi, naturopathic doctor, Talia Marcheggiani, here. I'm a mental health...
Should I Go On Anti-Depressant Medication?
"I was born with an imbalance in my brain," my patient explains to me, "The medication corrects it—Since I started taking Cipralex, I wake up feeling like a normal person again." It is estimated that about 10% of adults in North America are taking a medication to help...
Healing the Healers, Activists and Artists
It seems like the world is falling apart. These days more than ever. Race wars, weapons, war, wealth concentrated into the hands of a few, and violence, Facebook is filled with videos that fill our heads and hearts with a complicated mixture of sadness, anger,...
A Whole Body Approach to Healing Anxiety
With 18% of the population suffering, anxiety is the most common mental health condition in North America. Through clinical practice, I've quickly come to learn that "anxiety" is a term that means many different things to different people. Its symptoms can range from...
“Fat” is not a Feeling
I'm tucking away at the cake again because the people who've invited me for dinner have dessert. Dessert: the gluten-y, sugar-y, dough-y sweetness of relief from deprivation, the dopamine and serotonin rush when the food smashes against my lips, teeth and tongue and...
An Exercise for Boosting Self-Worth (+ Why Positive Affirmations Only Make You Feel Worse)
We all have a critic inside of our heads. Through talking to people, I've been able to form more complete pictures of what these critics look like. I've found them to be as varied as the heads they inhabit, with personalities and characteristics of their own. Some...