Free Help for Mental Illness? This Program is Making It Real

Nicole: 
When one person recovers from debilitating mental illness, it has real ripple effects to all the people in their lives, and so it’s just a very satisfying way to affect change in the world.

Bret: 
Welcome to The Metabolic Mind Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Bret Scher. Metabolic Mind is a nonprofit initiative of Baszucki Group. Where we’re providing information about the intersection of metabolic health and mental health and metabolic therapies such as nutritional ketosis as therapies for mental illness.

Thank you for joining us. Although our podcast is for informational purposes only and we aren’t giving medical advice, we hope you will learn from our content and it will help facilitate discussions with your healthcare providers to see if you could benefit from exploring the connection between metabolic and mental health.

If you or a loved one is interested in starting ketogenic or metabolic therapies to treat mental illness, but you’ve struggled to find the right place because of cost concerns or just being too expensive and not covered by insurance. all that is about to change. Licensed mental health counselor, Nicole Laurent, has an online program that she runs through her non-profit that she’s now doing a fundraiser for so that she can offer these incredible services at low to no cost. So if you want to learn more about it, here’s my interview all about this with Nicole Laurent. Many of the interventions we discussed can have potentially dangerous effects have done without proper supervision.

Consult your healthcare provider before changing your lifestyle or medications. In addition, it’s important to note that people may respond differently to ketosis and there isn’t one recognized universal response.

Nicole Laurent, welcome back to Metabolic Mind. So great to see you again. 

Nicole: 
Thank you, Bret. I’m glad to be here. 

Bret: 
Yeah. And I am excited to talk about your program and your nonprofit and your fundraising that you’re doing. But before we get into all that, give us your background story. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in ketosis and metabolic therapies as treatments for mental illness and improving brain function.

Nicole: 
Yeah, so I found a ketogenic diet after I was having my own pretty serious case of cognitive impairment and it took me a little while to figure it out because I was doing it on my own back then there wasn’t a lot of assistance or help available. And once I got it right, I felt a huge difference quite quickly.

It was very profound. And the part that I noticed as a licensed mental health counselor is that there was some really amazing effects on mood. Like I didn’t even know I was running around anxious, trying to regulate my emotions all the time until I did this ketogenic diet to basically save my brain.

And then as a mental health counselor sitting across from people who are struggling with anxiety and depression and knowing that this treatment exists, but then feeling like I couldn’t tell them about it. Because as a licensed mental health counselor, we’re supposed to very much be careful about practicing within our scope of practice.

But after sitting with many people and not really being able to tell them about it, I went back and I got some additional education. And now I use my psychotherapy skills within Washington State, where I’m licensed, and I use those to help people transition to ketogenic diets as a treatment for mental illness.

And that is my entire practice. That’s all I do anymore. 

Bret: 
Wow. Yeah. I could see how it could be so frustrating when you want to help somebody and you know you’ve got this tool in your toolkit that could help. But because of rules and regulations and restrictions, you feel like you can’t do it. That must have been so frustrating for you, but I’m glad you found a workaround for sure.

And it’s interesting, you have Brain Fog Recovery was a big part of your program and it seems like it’s transition to actually treating people with psychiatric diagnoses with DSM five criteria with serious symptoms and really helping them transform their lives.

And I bet you’ve seen some just amazing transformations. And actually you’ve published some of your amazing transformation. So how’s that been just for you as a practitioner to see this? 

Nicole: 
I have the best job in the world. That happens every day, like every day someone’s coming to me

feeling so much better or doing something that they didn’t think they could ever do that was ever even on the table for them. So I have the best job in the world and my program is called the Brain Fog Recovery Program, and there’s a story there that’s interesting, which is in 2022, when I wanted to create an online version of what I did in individual consultation, I did some research and that meant going into different mental health communities and asking questions and just basic things that people do when they think about how am I gonna translate what I do one-on-one into, a more scalable way, and people were not ready.

They were very upset that this was even suggested. They found this to be very invalidating, and I thought, oh my goodness. I still know this works really well, and so I’m going to name it the Brain Fog Recovery Program, and I’m gonna focus on comprehensive brain health and kind of rebranded a little bit differently, but ultimately, when I very first made this program, this was the exact community that I had in mind that I wanted to bring this to.

And so it’s just a cool full circle that’s really the majority of the people coming into my program. There’s, I get the whole range, so I get people with mild cognitive impairment, early Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, women with brain fog cognition issues, which really is a brain energy issue after menopause as we know from some of the research you guys have been talking about. And all the way to serious mental illness. And so my whole, my program kind of has this spectrum of people that is helping. So it’s really rewarding. 

Bret: 
Yeah, fascinating. I’m so glad that you’re in that position to provide that help for people.

So now tell us about this other exciting news about the nonprofit and the fundraising campaign that you’re doing. Tell us more about that. 

Nicole: 
Yeah, I’m, actually really excited about it because I’ve been taking people quietly in my program for very reduced cost or even free, for since 2022, really.

But I did it very quietly because I had this feeling or this concern that I would get really a lot of people and I would disappoint people and I wouldn’t be able to meet the demand because my understanding and my experience is that the demand is quite high for people who are low income and disabled.

Private consultation is expensive. There’s some great online programs that are probably less expensive, but for people who are truly or very low income or on government disability, those are inaccessible. And this is not offered as standard of care at their doctor’s office anymore.

So this population that is disabled with psychiatric illness can’t get access to the one treatment that could potentially, that has a really good chance, of helping to reduce their suffering. And that really has a good chance to help them with debilitating medication side effects.

Anyways, and then I, so I’ve had this, I did it quietly and then I helped, Lauren Kennedy West recover very publicly on her YouTube channel. And so I started getting a lot of inquiries because they wanted a piece of that. They wanted access to this information and many of them, a very high proportion of them were individuals who were low income, and couldn’t afford a private program or private consultation or on government disability. And so I already had the nonprofit in place, thank goodness, and I was able to, get them on in that way.

But after a while. It became really clear that if I wanted to continue to say yes, I had to figure out a way how to fund this, how to fund this work with this population that’s quickly becoming my main population of individuals that would like access to this treatment. 

Bret: 
Yeah, and it’s a super interesting point because when we think about, I don’t know the exact percentages, but I know it’s a high percentage of the people

with psychiatric diagnoses who are on disability, it’s high. And if a cutting edge treatment that can really change your life is inaccessible to that large of a percentage of the population, that is really unfortunate. So you’re taking amazing steps to try and remedy that. And now in order to find some funding to help you provide this care at low to no cost, you’re doing a fundraiser, is that right? 

Nicole: 
Absolutely. Baszucki Group got wind of what I do and how I’m helping this particular population, and they have given me a $20,000 matching grant, which means that when people donate for the month, of the matching campaign, their dollar is doubled.

So if they give $10. I get $20 and so on and so forth, our nonprofit does, and that really because the program is already in place. The infrastructure is already supported by my own private practice. It really just goes to direct help, and that means we can enroll more people very quickly.

So right now our enrollment calls are booked out two months. I would love to be able to send out a little link that says, you can come in sooner. I can do this for you. Yeah, it’s really great. And with the the, disability numbers. So in the United States, in terms of focusing specifically on mental illness such as depressive, bipolar, and related disorders, schizophrenia spectrum, and other psychiatric disorders, the count totals approximately 1.81 million beneficiaries as of 2024.

And while I’m not scaled to help 1.8 million by any means, or even maybe thousands, I can absolutely scale in a way that helps hundreds. And when one person recovers from debilitating mental illness, it has real ripple effects to all the people in their lives. And so it’s just a very satisfying way to affect change in the world.

Bret: 
Yeah. So if someone donates and allows you to enroll another person into the program, what is the program? Tell us more about it. 

Nicole: 
Yeah, the program is great. I’ve been doing it for over, since 2022, and I get the same beautiful results in my program that I get in private consultation.

So people will join and they will get access to some lessons. They will work through the lessons, and then I have them come on at least one live Q&A week for three months. I tell them, for anyone who’s had enrollment calls, they’ll recognize this. You have to come once a week for three months, treat it like a doctor’s appointment, show up no matter what.

They’re welcome to come twice a week. And then there’s also a private community group, for peer support as well that’s wonderful. And we just work through it all. And so the foundation is, of course, a ketogenic diet because you can’t supplement away a brain energy deficit, right? So you have to have a good medical ketogenic diet as your foundation.

And then we do some additional work with supplementation, and then we bring in all the THINK+SMART stuff for the third phase of the program. So things like light exposure, meal timing, exercise, socialization, how to avoid, metabolic disruptors in the environment, all the good stuff that you add on to a ketogenic diet to really get the best result.

Bret: 
Yeah. So you said the third phase of the program involves that. So it sounds like you don’t inundate them with too many things at once, but start with the ketogenic diet and then work their way to other modalities. Is that right? 

Nicole: 
Yes, that’s how I do it because most of the people coming into my program are having such debilitating side effects.

It’s really hard to have self-directed behavior and do all those things when your energy isn’t well or your frontal lobe is not functioning well. And so I just find, they naturally gravitate towards those things as they start to feel better. And then the other really wonderful thing about my program that I think is really helpful and important is that there isn’t a time limit.

So when people have cognitive impairment or mood disorders, it’s very difficult to put a time constraint or a time pressure on top of them trying to learn new material. And so there isn’t a time limit in this program. And so that means until someday I retire a long time from now, they can come on two live QandAs a week with me

as long as they want or need. And quite frankly, sometimes that is, I think, important in psychiatric recovery using ketogenic metabolic therapy. And the reason for that is sometimes it takes a little while to really get the hang of it. And also there’s the whole piece around people needing to titrate medications.

And sometimes that can cause problems in their recovery process. And so that extra support, that extra time with that extra support with that, really, I think a very loving, supportive community of peers who are working towards the same thing, I think is just a magical combination. 

Bret: 
And that point is so important, it’s worth emphasizing. It’s one thing to know what can help somebody, but it’s another thing to know how to transmit that information to them in a way that they can absorb and implement and sustain. And so by building the community, by pacing it out, by not having the end time, by letting them check in every week, those are so important. And with your experience and the way you’ve set it up, I think that’s key because just having the knowledge isn’t always enough. Like how to convey it is equally as important. 

Nicole: 
Yeah. And then we also, we allow them to enroll a support person, which that is also very important because some people are truly very impaired and they wouldn’t be able to access this without that support person.

And so though they both, they get to come in together and the support people coming in are really important people. They are mothers, they are fathers, they are sisters, they are best friends, they are aunts. Everybody is coming, coming in trying to assist this person and making these big changes in order to see what hope and promise ketogenic metabolic therapy might have for them.

And so it’s just very heartening. 

Bret: 
Yeah. So if someone wanted to. One sign up for the program or two donate to the nonprofit, where would they go to do that? 

Nicole: 
They would go to every.org. We’re having the Metabolic Psychiatric Recovery Project matching campaign. Thanks again to Baszucki Group and so on every.org you can find it,

Brain Fog Recovery Source. You can search for it, but also I’ll give you a link that you can share. 

Bret: 
Great. So that’s how they would donate. And what if they wanted to learn more about the course or sign up for the course or for the program? 

Nicole: 
Yes. Oh yes. So if they are wanting entry into through the nonprofit for low income or disabled populations, then they would email nonprofit@mentalhealthketo.com.

Very simply. And then if they are looking for private consultation or they want on into the online program through the for-profit, it would be nicole@mentalhealthketo.com. 

Bret: 
That’s fantastic. Thank you for providing that information. And we will obviously link to all that, in the description so people can find it.

And such an amazing resource that you’re offering. And Baszucki Group, we’re happy to help however we can. And so this matching campaign will go until when? 

Nicole: 
It’s scheduled till the end of July, although there’s been some talk of extending it if we need to just to make sure that we meet our goals so we can help more people.

So the matching campaign is going to be going on until we meet our goal and we run out of the matching grant. 

Bret: 
Great. I highly encourage everybody to take a look at all your information because you provide so much of it and to learn more about the program and if so interested to get involved and donate.

So, thank you so much. I really appreciate all the work you’re doing. 

Nicole: 
Thank you, Bret. This is great. Thank you for having me. 

Bret: 
This is pretty amazing, but right after Nicole and I recorded this interview, she got so many donations that she met the matching limit so there’s no longer matching, just for full disclosure, but you certainly can still go to her site and donate so that she can provide this type of service for people who need it.

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