Dr Brandon Santan: 5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Limit social media. Social Media can be very harmful to a developing brain and vulnerable mind. There is a lot of faulty information on social media and the risks around cyber bullying are only getting worse. The fast pace of social media has been demonstrated to shorten attention spans, interfere with concentration and focus and has also been shown to be highly addictive. It’s very distracting and we are seeing a decline to learning and mental health as a result of this, what seems to me to be a, bane on society.

As a part of my series about the “5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Brandon Santan.

Dr. Santan is a licensed and triple board-certified professional mental health and relationship counselor focusing on holistic mental wellness and specializing in addiction recovery, anxiety issues, stress & burnout, spiritual wellness, HSP, financial wellness and romantic relationships. He has over 16 years of experience in the industry and has worked in both inpatient and outpatient settings. Dr. Santan now owns a flourishing private practice in Chattanooga, TN called Thrivepoint and enjoys helping people heal and thrive. You can visit Dr. Santan online at: https://drbrandonsantan.com

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

My name is Brandon Santan. I started in the medical industry as a Certified Athletic Trainer (ACT) after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and sports medicine. I always struggled with anxiety and after college I got some help with that and I had such a good experience I decided to pivot my career to mental health. I earned a Master’s and a PhD in counseling and have been working in the field since about 2005 when I started my practicum and internship. I’m currently a licensed and triple board-certified mental health counselor. I own a private practice in Chattanooga TN. I enjoy helping people with all kinds of mental health issues and specialize in addiction recovery, anxiety issues, stress & burnout, HSP, spiritual wellness, financial wellness, holistic wellness and romantic relationships. I’m also a Certified Health Coach.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

The hospital, where I worked for almost 8 years after my graduate program, evaluated certain patients for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as part of their treatment plan. ECT is a series of treatments that take place over the course of 2–4 weeks. If a patient was a good candidate for ECT, the doctors would order the treatment and we would send the patient to the surgery center for the first treatment or two. After each treatment, the patient would return to our facility so that we could monitor their progress and watch for any side effects. If they seemed to be responding well, we would discharge them and the patient would then follow up with more ECT on their own to complete the series of ECT treatments based on their treatment plan.

I remember one particular week when the staff were getting our assignments in the morning, I ended up with an extra patient by mistake. If there were an odd number of patients, we would rotate taking on an extra case. This particular week wasn’t supposed to be my turn, but I was assigned the case by mistake, so I decided to just roll with it because we were short staffed and I wanted to be a team player. It turned out that this patient was referred for ECT treatments and I was able to accompany them to one of their ECT appointments. I followed the patient throughout the procedure including in the therapy room during the treatment and in post anesthesia care.

In school we learned about ECT and the history of this treatment modality, but it’s really difficult to conceptualize. This mistake and experience gave me tremendous insight into these types of therapeutic modalities and into the many different aspects of the treatment process. I was able to better understand the very complex yet well-orchestrated dance in which the patient is receiving treatment. The providers at the ECT treatment facility spent time explaining to me how the procedure works and what is happening inside the brain. That experience has been invaluable for my knowledge and understanding of patient care and treatment.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

When I was first working at one of the local hospitals to get some experience, before my starting my master’s program, we used a paging system that used physical pagers. This system worked great, but when I first started working there, I had never used a pager before. I didn’t realize it, one day, but the sound was on instead of the vibration. I was walking down the hall towards the nurse’s station and my pager started beeping, but I didn’t know what it was. There was a slight echo in the hallway, so the beeping sounded like it was coming from patient’s rooms and following me as I walked down the hall. I couldn’t figure out where the beeping noise was coming from. As I approached the nurse’s station to alert them that there was a beeping noise that was following me down the hall, everyone was looking at me like I had three eyes. About the time I reached the Nurse’s Station I heard someone say: “Turn off your pager!!!” I finally realized what that beeping noise was that was following me down the hallway, but it was too late. Everyone was annoyed at me for letting my pager beep longer than expected. Needless to say, I was quite embarrassed. I’m glad I’m able to think back on that now with a smile.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I grew up in a very close community. I wouldn’t say it was any one person, but a community of people including my family who supported me and helped me along the way. I had a few really good counselors and mentors who encouraged me to use my experiences to help others. Most recently I would say my wife has been the most engaged in my support and encouragement to pursue my ambitions.

What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?

Prioritize self-care and boundaries. As with all helping professions, therapists need to be extremely careful to not get overwhelmed by all the people who need their help. It’s critical for us to have strict boundaries around office hours, returning calls and messages, setting appointments and our own self-care strategies. Strive for balance and don’t let anyone dissuade you from your priorities.

What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?

I would say, again, that balance is key. We are seeing excellent benefits for work performance and stress reduction in organizations that promote and support flexible work/life balance for its employees. We all know that life can throw us a curve ball sometimes and even when there is no curve ball, we can just get busy with life tasks. Knowing that an organization will be flexible and provide support for us to tend to life issues, increases employee morale and, as such, benefits the entire culture of the organization.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. Mental health is often looked at in binary terms; those who are healthy and those who have mental illness. The truth, however, is that mental wellness is a huge spectrum. Even those who are “mentally healthy” can still improve their mental wellness. From your experience or research, what are five steps that each of us can take to improve or optimize our mental wellness. Can you please share a story or example for each.

I love the idea of “mental wellness”. I agree 100% that mental health falls on a huge spectrum and I’m eternally grateful to Authority Magazine for working to bring this to public awareness. We need more awareness, and our society is long overdue for a reduced social stigma around mental health challenges. I’m so thankful for this opportunity to participate in this interview and I hope that what I share will be beneficial to many.

I’d like to start by providing a proper definition of “Mental Wellness”. The term “Mental Wellness” provides, what we would consider, a wellness narrative around mental health. Rather than thinking of it in a binary healthy or not healthy, we can consider mental wellness in much the same way that we would consider physical wellness. This is the narrative that says: “I’m not as well as I would like to be so I will be improving my mental wellbeing.” Of course, the brain can become diseased so some mental illness is physical illness but when it comes to the brain, brain health will often define mental health and vice versa.

There are so many things that can improve and/or optimize our mental wellness, but since we are talking about “wellness” here, which I equate with a holistic framework or model of health, I will stick to that theme for my list.

With that in mind, here are 5 steps that each of us can take to improve or optimize our mental wellness.

1. Assess your micronutrient levels. See a nutritionist or ask your doctor to check key nutrients that are important to mental wellness such as Vitamin D, Folate and Vitamin B12. During my graduate program I had a professor who turned his nose up at the idea of using supplements saying that, in the US we get all our nutrients from our diet and supplementing only serves to make you have expensive urine. In hindsight, that was a very irresponsible message to send young clinicians. What I would come to realize later is that roughly half of the population have genetic mutations or morphisms on key vitamin and nutrient receptors for mental wellbeing such as the Vitamin D, Folate and B12 receptors. These genetic mutations cause deficiencies and make it difficult for the body to keep those nutrients at optimal levels. These genetic anomalies also often prevent people from metabolizing synthetic vitamins which are put into our foods during the refining and enrichment processes. Add to that being indoors longer and more often which preventing us from getting the amount of sun exposure we need for healthy Vitamin D levels. When I was working at the hospital, the psychiatrists gave everyone Vitamin D and Vitamin B12 supplements indiscriminately. These are nutrients that are vital to mental wellness. If your doctor says that your vitamin levels are within the normal range, ask about, what’s called, subclinical deficiencies for you individually. This would be a deficiency based on your genetic data rather than the textbook clinical range. Some people’s test results fall within the clinical range, but would be considered abnormal for the individual who has a certain genetic profile. If your doctor recommends supplementation, look for high quality supplements that are natural (L-Methylfolate, for example, is a good option for folate supplementation NOT Folic Acid which is the synthetic form of folate), bioavailable and liposomal. As an example, consider that, in the US, the FDA recommends 500 IU of Vitamin D daily. According to research, we get roughly 10,000 IU from the sun on a sunny summer afternoon spent outside. The FDA is severely under recommending Vitamin D and it seems to be having quite an impact on mental wellness. ALWAYS check with your medical doctor before using any supplements, but this could be huge for many people in improving and/or optimizing their mental wellness.
2. Exercise. As many already know, exercise is crucial to physical health especially as we age. The brain is a physical organ and as such, benefits also from physical exercise. Increased blood flow, better physical efficiency and higher oxygen levels all have tremendous benefits for our brain health as well as our mental wellness. Researchers have discovered that, for some people, exercise is just as beneficial as an anti-depressant in healing depression. It may even be more beneficial in certain instances since exercise increases overall health. Again, check with your medical doctor to make sure exercise is appropriate for you and what type of exercise you should do, but please consider being more active in some way. It’s tremendously helpful for our mental wellbeing.
3. Find a provider that will image your brain. I echo the sentiment of Dr. Daniel Amen. Dr. Amen is a prominent psychiatrist based in the US in the state of CA and a pioneer in brain imaging. He shares his concerns about the prescribing providers in our industry for being the only healthcare providers who treat a part of the body they don’t regularly image. Think about it for a minute. If you have an irregular heart beat and see a cardiologist, that doctor will to an ECG and an ultrasound. If you have joint pain the orthopedist will do an x-ray and a CAT scan and maybe even an MRI if it’s soft tissue related. But when have you ever heard of a psychiatrist doing a brain scan before prescribing a treatment protocol for a mental health disorder? It hardly ever happens. Dr. Amen has established clinics throughout the US now and one of the first things his clinicians do is perform a SPECT scan of the brain. This helps the providers see which parts of the brain have diminished blood flow and activity so that they can implement the proper treatment protocols including more precise prescription medications and the correct supplements.
4. Consider additional and alternative treatments. The number of alternative treatments are growing. Each year we get closer to perfecting many different treatment protocols that serve to supplement medications and therapy. These alternative treatments include: biofeedback, EMDR, hypnosis, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), Cranial Electrotherapy Stimulation (CES), Virtual Reality (VR), psychophysiological coherence training and vagus nerve stimulation are all examples of supplemental and alternative treatments for mental wellness. These alternative and supplemental treatments are among the top contenders for mental wellness promotion. A psychiatrist, where I practice in the Chattanooga, TN area, who’s name is Tim Jennings, MD, treats patients with a combination of medications and TMS. I’ve spoken with him several times about this treatment protocol and it seems to have a higher than average success rate. TMS is even FDA approved to treat depression. So don’t discount alternative type treatments. You may end up finding something that works well for you.
5. Consider medication. I know this suggestion may seem antithetical to a theme of holistic mental wellness, but I’ve lost count of the number of patients I’ve worked with who are hesitant to take medications but do so later and wish they had started medications sooner. Taking medications doesn’t mean you will have to take them for the rest of your life. I like to explain to patients that medications are like a life preserver when you are stranded in water. It helps you keep your head above water during rough times and once you ‘learn to swim’ in therapy (i.e., develop strong, healthy coping skills) or get out of the water (i.e., enter into a remission or heal), you can take off the life preserver. With your prescribing provider’s help, you will be able to wean off medications and continue to grow and change in therapy and life. Finally, in considering medications, it’s best to find a psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner to discuss medications for mental health. Many PCPs will have limited knowledge of the broad scope of medications or they have a few they like to prescribe for everyone based on what works for the majority of their patients. Psychiatrists are MDs or nurse practitioners with specialized training in the prescription and management of psychiatric medications. They have a broad knowledge of the various kinds and formulations of these types of medications and can often find one that works for you much more quickly. In addition, talk to your psychiatrist about genetic testing. There is a genetic profiling test called GenoMind and the results will include a list of medications that are likely to work well with your genetic profile. This makes targeting the right medication(s) much easier and more efficient. There has been a lot of success with this method of medication evaluation.

How about teens and pre teens. Are there any specific new ideas you would suggest for teens and pre teens to optimize their mental wellness?

I have to admit that I don’t work with teens and pre-teens. As a clinician I only work with adults so I’m far from an expert on what teens and pre-teens need to optimize their mental wellness, but here are a few ideas based on discussions with colleagues, recent research and personal studies on treatment protocols for this age group.

1. Limit social media. Social Media can be very harmful to a developing brain and vulnerable mind. There is a lot of faulty information on social media and the risks around cyber bullying are only getting worse. The fast pace of social media has been demonstrated to shorten attention spans, interfere with concentration and focus and has also been shown to be highly addictive. It’s very distracting and we are seeing a decline to learning and mental health as a result of this, what seems to me to be a, bane on society.
2. Turn off screens. Digital information reigns supreme currently. Kids are in front of computers and screens even for in person learning as they do activities online and watch videos for learning. Our brains aren’t currently capable of such exclusive digital consumption. We’ve seen a decline in standardized testing scores and my theory is that it’s due, in part by, movements towards digital learning. Turning off screens and engage in real-world activities, including reading physical books, can be tremendously beneficial to the mental wellness of this age group.
3. Be active. I don’t think it is a surprise to anyone that a sedentary lifestyle is responsible for many health issues. Physical activity is extremely important for this age group and their developing minds. Music, athletics and other extra-curricular activities give balance and help the developing mind thrive.
4. Develop healthy relationships. Teens and pre-teens are extremely vulnerable to peer pressure, bullying and the influence of what others think of them. Developing healthy relationships that are affirming, validating, kind, supportive and considerate, is vital to the mental wellbeing of this age group. I encourage teens and pre-teens to find a mentor and develop a strong support network with family, friends and community leaders that are trustworthy and have their best interests at heart.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?

Yes! Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Daniel Amen, MD. Dr. Amen is a fantastic provider who has a holistic approach to mental health. He’s based in CA, but has developed brain scanning techniques to actually image the brain and learn about physical issues related to mental health disorders. He has several clinics around the country. He’s somewhat of a disruptor so he’s not very popular in my industry, but I pay close attention to disruptors because I believe that’s how change happens. In this book, Dr. Amen talks about the Cognitive, Behavior Therapy (CBT) techniques that are backed by a plethora of research. He also discusses actual physical brain health and the importance of supplementation and natural remedies for mental wellness. I remember distinctly listening to the audiobook version of this book and I couldn’t stop listening. It was like he was speaking right to my heart. I’m now currently in his program for providers who want to learn more specialized and specific techniques for mental wellness. This man is brilliant and if my colleagues, who are skeptical, would just take a moment to understand his research, I have little doubt that they would be amazed.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I don’t know that I would consider myself inspiring this movement as it’s already underway, but I would love to be more involved in the holistic and natural wellness side of mental health treatment. Research shows a strong link between diet, exercise and other healthy lifestyle behaviors to mental wellbeing. Natural and alternative treatments do help improve outcomes to traditional mental health treatments already so why aren’t we doing more of them? There are many ways to inspire more of a movement here such as: change in schools around lunch menus and exercise activities for school aged children, educate young medical doctors and therapists on the relevant research related to natural and alternative treatments, encourage researchers to focus more on natural and holistic remedies, speaking out against and creating change around marketing information such as outlawing direct to consumer pharmaceutical marketing, creating change around access to natural and holistic treatment options including requiring them to be covered by insurance providers are all ways that society can effect change on this front.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

“Success is the sum of small efforts — repeated day-in and day-out.” — Robert Collier

Many people get overwhelmed at the thought of making change. Even suggestions in this article can seem overwhelming to many. Breaking down your goals into very small, bite sized pieces will help you maintain consistent growth and change. You don’t have to make giant leaps all the time, if at all. You can make small efforts that will add up to big results. Think of it as a marathon not a sprint. I try my best to instill this in every patient I meet. I also try to apply it to my own life also.

As an example from my life, we, unfortunately, had an issue in the crawlspace of our house and we needed to do some renovations as a result. I took on a lot of the work myself to try and keep costs down. It was a huge and stressful and overwhelming undertaking. I got through it, though, with the principle from this quote. I just did a little bit at a time and reminded myself that those small efforts each day will add up and they did. I repeated this quote in my head every day to help me stay motivated.

What is the best way our readers can follow you on social media?

Readers should visit my website at https://drbrandonsantan.com where I will keep visitors up to date with my social media and practice changes. I can also be found on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drbrandonsantan/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.brandon.santan/ and YouTube: https://drbrandonsantan.com/youtube-bitesizementalhealth

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!