Certified to Heal: How Clarus Health Is Bridging Mental Health and Addiction Treatment
Clarus Health partnered with LegitScript to build patient trust and overcome the advertising friction that comes with operating at the intersection of behavioral healthcare and addiction treatment. As a pioneer in integrated, mind-body medicine, Clarus Health needed a way to stand apart from less scrupulous providers in a noisy, stigma-laden space. LegitScript Certification provided the rigorous, independent certification that enabled Clarus Health to reach more patients with safe, evidence-based care.
About Clarus Health
Clarus Health provides personalized, whole-person healthcare by addressing the root causes of complex medical conditions—not just the symptoms. Their experienced physicians specialize in integrative medicine, functional medicine, mental health, addiction treatment, chronic pain, and advanced diagnostic testing to create customized care plans tailored to each patient. Trusted by patients from around the world, they combine evidence-based treatments, comprehensive biomarker testing, and seamless care coordination to deliver compassionate, high-quality, patient-centered care.
"Innovative providers who are invested in pioneering treatments recognize the overlap of mental health and addiction. Certification is a natural step for these providers to increase trust to expand patient reach."
Dr. Anthony Kaveh, M.D., Co-Founder, Clarus Health
Q&A With Dr. Anthony Kaveh
In the following Q&A, Dr. Anthony Kaveh explains why Clarus Health chose LegitScript Certification to build trust, ensure quality, and protect vulnerable patients seeking care.
You’ve built Clarus Health around the idea that mental health and addiction treatment shouldn’t be treated as separate systems. Where did that conviction come from, and what does the “traditional” split get wrong?
When you are “stuck” in a loop –chronic pain, alcohol abuse, or even ruminating loops of depression – your mind and body are in a vicious cycle. You simply can’t optimally treat one side of your health (like emotional pain) without addressing the other side (like physical pain). At Clarus Health, we recognize that emotional pain nearly always underlies addiction. If we want to heal the core, we need to acknowledge this mind-body connection.
Walk us through what a truly integrated model looks like in practice. If a patient walks in with depression and a substance use disorder, how does your team avoid treating one and missing the other?
A person’s whole health comprises their biological systems, social connectiveness, sleep, nutrition, physical activity, and greater sense of purpose and fulfillment. At Clarus Health, we work through these domains to identify the “hungry ghosts” that may be covertly fueling conditions like addiction or anxiety. Too often, social stigmas lead to shame around these conditions and a reluctance to even acknowledge them with doctors. Trust is key to open vulnerability with our patients at Clarus Health.
Before LegitScript Certification, how did the dual nature of your practice, behavioral healthcare and addiction treatment, create friction with advertising platforms or patient trust?
One of the great paradoxes in medicine is that some of our most powerful medications to treat pain (emotional and physical) can be addictive. As the medical field adopts innovative approaches to holistic behavioral healthcare, social stigmas can grow with it. This is especially the case around novel FDA-approved treatments, like Spravato, as well as off-label treatments, like IV ketamine. Social media (and traditional journalism) is rife with unverified reports that may fuel patients’ fears and lead them to avoid potentially life-saving treatments.
Because Clarus Health sits at the intersection of two heavily regulated, often-abused categories, what did the certification process reveal about the standards patients should expect from any provider claiming to treat both conditions?
The certification process was in-depth and provided an “extra pair of eyes” in looking at Clarus Health’s operating procedures in the context of the greater healthcare industry. Patients should be aware that not all clinics go through rigorous quality and safety audits to ensure optimal care delivery. All patients should feel comfortable checking that their treatment centers have cross-disciplinary expertise and clear safety guidelines, like we have established at Clarus Health. Patients should also know who their treatment providers are and their qualifications.
Patients researching ketamine therapy or addiction treatment online run into a lot of noise, and some bad actors. How does the LegitScript seal help someone in a vulnerable moment tell the difference between a provider like Clarus Health and a “quick fix” operation?
LegitScript certification provides assurance that clinics like Clarus Health have undergone a rigorous audit process and maintain a level of quality. The “noise” is real around ketamine treatments because many are not-FDA approved, and some raise serious health and psychiatric risks, including addiction. Patients with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and chronic pain are inherently vulnerable, and LegitScript makes it easier for these patients to find safer, vetted treatment providers.
Has certification changed how you’re able to talk about addiction and mental health together in your marketing or advertising, where platforms often have very different rules for each category?
Certification has helped us recognize noncompliance in other clinics and educate patients to identify these red flags. Unfounded claims on websites and social media can actually help patients differentiate between trustworthy clinics and less scrupulous providers.
What would it take for the wider industry to stop treating mental health and addiction as two different fields, and what role do you see certification and standards playing in getting there?
Innovative providers who are invested in pioneering treatments recognize the overlap of mental health and addiction. Certification is a natural step for these providers to increase trust to expand patient reach. Reaching more patients helps centers like Clarus Health safely treat as many patients as possible. That’s why we entered this field in the first place.
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