Caroline Smythe, M.D.
Certified in Functional Medicine
The balance of the body’s systems is vital to the balance of one’s mental health and well-being. What happens in your gut, adrenals, and with your immune system can affect your mood and anxiety level. Treating merely one's symptoms can result in only a modest benefit, and can often be an approach that requires treatment indefinitely. Getting to the root cause and treating the underlying imbalances will oftentimes result in a steady improvement in multiple areas simultaneously.
Using the holistic approach of Functional Medicine, Dr. Smythe, in partnership with each individual, gets to the root causes. The result is better health overall.
Dr. Smythe works with those with depression and mood symptoms, anxiety, ADHD, addictions, insomnia, eating disorders, and those on the autism spectrum. She is currently seeing all patients via telemedicine.
Dr Smythe began training with the Institute for Functional Medicine in 2009 and became certified in 2015. She was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 1996 and recertified in 2006. She graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Environmental Science and obtained her MD from MUSC. She went on to complete her residency, including a fellowship in Community Psychiatry, at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Dr. Smythe worked primarily in community psychiatry for about 12 years, in both Charleston, South Carolina and Eugene, Oregon. For most of that time, she worked on a PACT team (Program for Assertive Community Treatment), delivering care to the severely mentally ill in the Charleston area. Part of her time was in outreach to rural areas of SC and as the doctor for a locked residential facility in Eugene. She then established an integrative private practice in 2003. This began to transform into a functional psychiatry practice as she started her training with IFM in 2009. This certification includes a series of training modules as follows: Applying Functional Medicine in Clinical Practice (a 5-day “boot camp” immersion into Functional Medicine), along with modules in GI Health, Detoxification, Energy, Hormone, Immune/Inflammatory, and Cardiometabolic. You can read more about this on the web site of the Institute for Functional Medicine at www.functionalmedicine.org.
She now practices functional psychiatry in Charleston, focusing more on the treatment of the root causes of illness rather than the symptoms. In 2017, she trained with Dale Bredesen, MD in Reversing Cognitive Decline and with William Walsh, PhD in Mastering Brain Chemistry. Other training and experience that have helped shape Dr. Smythe into the doctor she is today include: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn; certification in Rubenfeld Synergy, an energy-based body-oriented psychotherapy; the Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Food as Medicine training; certification in Psych-K (using energy systems of the body to facilitate shifts in one’s beliefs); EFT professional training (Emotional Freedom Technique); work in the Indian Ocean and Galapagos Islands assisting with sperm whale research; Master Gardener certification in Eugene, Oregon; and being a “constant student” of health and always remaining open to what is true for the individual.