FAMILY MENTAL WELLNESS
Brain Power Assessing and harnessing neurodiversity BY DAVID DINSMORE SPONSORED BY
Integrated Brain Health
L eesa Lacey considers her profession personal. Founder and CEO of Integrated Brain Health, Lacey’s path to helping children and their families better understand how their brains work began with a brain injury of her own. Afterward, she obtained a graduate degree and became a licensed professional counselor. At the age of 40, Lacey discovered she had attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Her then-20-year-old daughter, who had been struggling for years, also received an ADHD diagnosis. Lacey began reflecting on all the things she wished she’d done differently for her daughter and realized she wanted to dedicate her career to keeping other parents from experiencing the same regrets. Evaluating overall brain health According to Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), ADHD is prevalent in about 7 percent of children ages 18 and younger. Lacey specializes in evaluating and treating ADHD, but the scope of IBH’s work extends beyond ADHD to provide a comprehensive approach to improving brain health. When Lacey started her company 12 years ago as a counseling agency under a different name, she realized many children had contributing factors that needed addressing, but there were disconnects between the different providers treating these children. “Unfortunately, professionals have a tendency to stay in their lanes,” said Lacey. “But when it comes to the brain, there is no one lane. If we want to really understand what’s going on and help our clients, we have to be able to look across multiple domains of the brain.” Lacey pivoted the company from counseling to a more holistic approach addressing children’s brain health and renamed the organization Integrated Brain Health. Assessment for clients begins with the Integrated Brain Health Multidimensional Assessment Tool, a process IBH refined that helps identify the spectrum of factors impacting the brain’s health. With this tool, Lacey and her team gain a holistic understanding of their clients’ brains, and they can treat them more effectively with customized, integrated plans.
“When we tell parents about our Assessment Tool, the buy-in is usually instantaneous,” Lacey said. “They’ve been bounced around to different providers for years in some cases, without seeing any real improvement. They are frustrated because they don’t have answers and they’ve tried everything they know to do. They feel alone.” The Assessment Tool evaluates not just the behaviors that led to a referral to IBH but also other environmental factors and experiences to help understand the “why” behind the child’s behavior. It can also help identify additional neurodiverse factors. For example, in children ages 2 to 17 diagnosed with ADHD, 63.8 percent had at least one co-occurring condition, according to CHADD. A little more than half of all children had behavioral or conduct problems, 32.7 percent had anxiety, 16.8 percent showed signs of depression and 13.7 percent showed autism spectrum disorders. “Every child is unique,” Lacey said. “Some may have memory issues. Some may have sensory issues. Some may [have] auditory processing issues. We have to look at exactly how and what all is impacting that child’s brain in order to treat them effectively.” In some cases, the team at IBH works with families whose children have been incorrectly diagnosed and have navigated years of frustration. Laurie Patterson’s teenage daughter was previously diagnosed with ADHD, but the Assessment Tool determined she did not have ADHD. Instead, she was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, performance anxiety and depression. In addition to providing the Patterson family with an accurate diagnosis for their daughter and effective tools to support her, IBH helped them assess and improve their communication with each other. “She helped my husband and I have both perspective and hope,” said Patterson of working with Lacey. “IBH goes well beyond traditional therapy [to] look at nutrition, exercise, screen time, sleep hygiene and family dynamics.”
28 METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / JAN-FEB 2023
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