Community Highlights: Meet David Wright of Atlanta Holistic Mental Health & Wellness

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Wright.

Hi David, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Dr. David Wright’s holistic practices are based in Atlanta, GA (Sandy Springs/Roswell), and he has a diverse academic background with degrees in medicine, healthcare management, healthcare law and policy, and healthcare administration. Dr. David holds multiple roles, including Clinical Director at Atlanta Health & Wellness Coaching, Atlanta Coaching & Hypnotherapy Associates, and Atlanta Holistic Mental Health & Wellness, and Forensic Psychiatric Consultant at Pact Atlanta LLC under Dr. Todd M. Antin. Dr. David professional focus includes complementary, holistic, and integrative medicine approaches, hypnosis, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and finding and utilizing creative ways of addressing various psychological and psychiatric disorders without medications. Dr. David has authored several publications revolving around psychological wisdom, empowerment, and diet management, his books being featured on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Dr. David Wright, MD, MM, MBA, MHSA, is a holistic mental health practitioner, hypnotherapist, and life coach based in Atlanta, GA. A summa cum laude graduate of Xavier University School of Medicine, Dr. David studied forensic psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, and neurology during medical school. He holds three master’s degrees in healthcare law and policy, healthcare administration, and healthcare management. With a focus on natural, holistic, and integrative approaches to mental health and wellness, Dr. David has established multiple practices, including Atlanta Holistic Mental Health & Wellness and Atlanta Coaching & Hypnotherapy Associates. Dr. David is also the author of several books on psychological wisdom, empowerment, and cognitive behavioral approaches to health and wellness.

Dr. David hosts the “Fresh Start with Dr. David” podcast, where he discusses mental health and wellness topics. His clinical expertise includes ADHD, major depression, anxiety disorders, negative behavior patterns, addictions, destructive cycles, personality disorders, cognitive-behavioral therapy, hypnosis, and lifestyle-based medicine approaches. Dr. Wright is committed to empowering individuals through holistic and functional methods to achieve mental and physical well-being. Fresh Start with Dr. David is now in it’s 5th Season of Production.

Dr. David has offices conveniently located in Sandy Springs/Roswell (1010 Huntcliff) and Buckhead (Piedmont Center), and he has been featured in As featured in Psychology Today, Doximity, The Atlantan Magazine, Jezebel Magazine, Modern Luxury Medicine + Doctors Magazine, Blue Ink Book Reviews, Clarion Book Reviews, Yahoo Finance, Google Business, Fitness Trainer Magazine, Chapters Books, Blackwells Books, and iHeartRadio. Dr. David has also partnered with community organizations such as CHAMPS (Community Health And Mens Promotional Summit)(Dr. Millard J. Collier, Jr.), The Ryan White Foundation, The Ryan Cameron Foundation, The Queen of Hearts Foundation, Clayton County Magnet Schools, Transformational Living Wellness Lifestyle—TLWL (Nina Norstrom), Inc., and Brewing Resilience/The Resilience Hub (Sydnee Floyd, RN), among others.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been a smooth road, some of it not even being paved. However, I am of the firm belief that challenges and adversities are also opportunities for creativity, growth, novelty, strength, and resilience.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Atlanta Holistic Mental Health & Wellness?
I have a “Holistic Mental Health &Wellness” Practice. My primary practice is Atlanta Holistic mental Health & Wellness [AHMHW]. My practice uses holistic, naturopathic, cognitive behavioral, psychoanalytic, and other methods (including Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, Guided Meditation, Life Coaching, Cognitive Behavioral Therapies & Techniques, Regression Analysis, Behavioral Analysis, and NLP).

My goal with each and every client is to provide a holistic, functional, integrative mental health approach to help individuals identify & accept issues, challenges & symptoms and then reduce, resolve or eliminate them using methods that help them build the mental, emotional, neural & metabolic muscles needed to overcome them without addiction or unwanted side effects.

My philosophy is that everyone is a unique individual with unique strengths, weaknesses and challenges, & I meet each client where they are with the knowledge & expectation that true change requires them to grow beyond their current comfort zones. I share more philosophies about psychology, mental health and wellness, & healthcare in general in my 2 self-improvement books, Tomato Bisque for the Brain, and Sweet Potato Pie for the Spirit, Soul & Psyche, both available on Amazon & Barnes & Noble.

My inspiration for the healing profession began with the care that I received from my parents & community, including my discovery of the principles of Dr. Sigmund Freud, Dr. Milton Erickson, Dr. Carl Jung, progressed as I completed college (Triple Majors in Biology, Philosophy & Psychology; Double Minors in Chemistry & Sociology/Anthropology), & grew as I evolved through Medical School, Masters Programs & into consulting working in Forensic & Addiction Psychiatry. It ends with a desire to HEAL.

Instead of pursuing a residency in psychiatry, I chose to study and train in disciplines that were more in line with the techniques used by the Father and Uncle of Psychiatry, Dr. Sigmund Freud (The Father of Psychiatry) and Dr. Milton Erickson (The Uncle of Psychiatry), respectively. Specifically, I chose an approach to health and holistic mental health in which the first step doesn’t involve just handing a patient a pill. During medical school and beyond, I found that psychiatry today typically involved seeing a patient for 15 to 30 minutes and making medication-related decisions, and generally prescribing pills. And, I couldn’t see myself simply prescribing pills every 15 minutes for the rest of my life. I also don’t feel that a pill should be the first solution sought for every problem.

Oftentimes, psychiatrists and other physicians (primary care physicians, specialists, etc.) prescribe medications that are addictive in nature and which carry significant, lifelong side effects, and many fail to share that with their patients. And, it’s my belief that it’s not ethical to treat someone with addictive agents without being honest with them about it. We have too much of an Opioid, Stimulant, and Benzodiazepine Crisis in this country to be concealing from patients that their prescription agents are addictive. I believe that helping people move past psychological, psychiatric, and life problems should involve getting to the root causes of their issues instead of just masking or matching the symptoms.

Finally, it’s my belief that insurance companies and large pharmaceutical corporations should not be running healthcare in this country, and that’s what’s been happening for the past 60 years in the United States’ healthcare system. The purpose of my practices and my podcast, Fresh Start with Dr. David, is to change that and to provide people with more holistic, long term, long lasting choices and options.

Most of the clients who request an appointment from me aren’t skeptical about a holistic approach; actually, that’s what they are seeking. In my experience, many more people tend to have skepticisms about being treated with prescription medications, many of which are addictive and/or carry tough side effects, than holistic approaches. I think that people become skeptical about certain approaches when those approaches overly promise and/or push unbelievable claims or unrealistic results. When people push products or services with unbelievable claims, unrealistic results, or fast and easy outcomes then people should be skeptical.

Here a list of many of the services available at Atlanta Holistic Mental Health & Wellness: (1) Mental Massage–A short Hypnosis Session (2) Guided Meditation (3) Hypnosis (4) Hypnotherapy (5) Health, Wellness, & Lifestyle Coaching (6) Mental Health Coaching–Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Depression, ADHD, PTSD, Trauma, Imposter Syndrome, etc. (7) NLP [Neuro Linguistic Programming] (8) Life Coaching & Life Direction Coaching (9) Relationship Coaching (10) Academic Coaching (11) Vocational Coaching (12) Professional Development Coaching (13) Performance Coaching (14) Dietary Coaching (15) Nutritional Coaching (16) Weight Loss & Weight Management Coaching (17) Chronic Disease Management Coaching (18) Quit Smoking/Quit Vaping Coaching (19) Anger Management Coaching (20) Work-Life Balance Coaching.

When it comes to conditions like these (Depression, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, PTSD, ADHD, etc.), I’m much more likely to use an assortment of methods and approaches to get to the underlying root cause of the symptoms associated with these conditions and to help my clients resolve them. Generally, I’d likely use a combination of methods, including life coaching, cognitive behavioral methods, psychoanalytic techniques, exploration of self-defense mechanisms, hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and other, meditative techniques.

In my experience, hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and other techniques, help to loosen the tightness of the subconscious mind and many of the rigidities, patterns, and systems that are running on auto-pilot there. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy help to move clients past many of the self-limiting beliefs that they may hold about themselves and their abilities. In addition, techniques and methods like hypnosis, hypnotherapy, NLP, Time Line Therapy ®, and Guided Meditation help to establish a strong rapport with clients, which makes it much more likely that they will play an active, trusting, and energetic role in their own healing, improvement, and evolution.

Psychoanalytic & Psychodynamic techniques and methods help with making, creating, and elucidating connections between different personality and psychological factors, which helps the conscious, subconscious, unconscious, and other than conscious parts of the mind find solutions to problems using the often buried connections between variables. Because many parts of the mind operate on auto-pilot, psychoanalytic techniques ca help to reconfigure mental processes so that automatic process are more adaptive and flexible and less rigid and stagnant. These techniques can be used during hypnosis and hypnotherapy sessions in order to help client move beyond their current maladaptive patterns, cycles, and oscillations. They also help clients move beyond self-limiting belief systems that undermine their true goals and ambitions.

The biggest misconception people have is that a hypnosis or hypnotherapy session will cure anything. In my experience, that’s just not how it works. I often get requests that reference half a dozen conditions that are severe and chronic with a desire to cure it with a single hypnosis session. I think that many of these misconceptions are based upon stage hypnosis events, television shows, and movie caricatures of hypnosis.

Hypnosis is not magic. It’s not voodoo. Dr. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychiatry, used Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. But, he did not use it as a cure for psychiatric or mental health disorders and conditions. He used as another tool to help move clients closer to healing and symptom resolution & management, not as a cure.
Generally, if a problem takes time to be created, then it will take time and energy for it to be resolved, decreased, or managed. My biggest message to others is to personally and financially invest in your own mental growth and stability, self-improvement, self-development, and healing. If you make a significant investment in your own mental health and wellness, you’ll receive a return that exponentially magnifies what you’ve spent.

Particularly in the mental health and wellness field, you get what you pay for. If it’s cheap, then you should be skeptical. Find someone who knows what they are doing, is flexible, knowledgeable, and is truly passionate and purposeful in helping you reach your goals. Finally, don’t you dare give up on yourself! Your present circumstances are temporary, so don’t try to use a permanent solution to address a temporary problem.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
The most important lesson that I’ve learned along my personal and professional journeys is that you can never stop learning, you can never stop growing, obstacles don’t go away (you get better at managing them), and acceptance, agreements, and boundaries help you maintain peace, stability, and tranquility in your life. And, those things require work.

Pricing:

• Honestly, I don’t really discuss session pricing with prospective clients until I know that what I have to offer meets the clients needs and expectations. If those don’t match up, than pricing doesn’t matter anyway.
• A Discovery Appointment to explore whether my services match your needs is only $100 for a 60 to 90 Minute Session. If there isn’t a good match, then I’ll refer you to others (psychiatrists, specialists, programs, facilities) who are able to provide what you need, free of charge.
• If what I offer does match your problems, dilemmas, and/or challenges, then we can talk about price moving forward.
• I offer flexible payment options, I offer discounted packages that offer up to 57% Off of sessions, and I provide discounts for clients who send referrals.
• I don’t accept (i.e., bill) health insurance plans, but I do accept HSAs (Health Savings Accounts) and FSAs (Flexible Healthcare Spending Accounts). There are also convenient financing and flexible payment options.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ahmhw.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidawrightmd/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/atlantaholisticmentalhealth/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ahmhw/
• Twitter: https://x.com/davidawrightmd
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@freshstartwithdrdavid
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/atlanta-holistic-mental-health-and-wellness-atlanta
• Soundcloud: https://www.amazon.com/stores/David-A.-Wright-MD-MM-MBA-MHSA/author/B086DXQDLH
• Other: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/atlanta-holistic-mental-health-wellness-atlanta-ga/319394