( continued from page 39) launched him into a national leadership role and for nearly a decade, he taught physicians how to connect effectively through technology.“ I was leading workshops on how to be on camera, how to emote better, look more authentic and build relationships online,” he said.
His philosophy was simple.“ We wanted to make telemedicine equal to in person treatment, rather than a second-class level of treatment.”
After leaving Hawaii, he spent several years in California, where he continued expanding mental health programs and exploring innovative treatments. It was there that he encountered interventional technologies that fundamentally changed his perspective on psychiatric care. At Mindful Health Solutions in San Francisco, he trained with pioneers in transcranial magnetic stimulation( TMS) and Spravato therapy.
“ I had my skills in psychotherapy, diagnostics and psychopharmacology,” he says.“ I was pretty good at it.” But he often encountered limits.“ I would hit a wall with patients. We got to a point where they couldn’ t get better.”
Then TMS offered something different. Rather than relying solely on medication, the treatment uses targeted magnetic stimulation to activate specific brain networks associated with depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.“ It’ s a completely different approach, and it’ s exciting,” he said. What impressed him most were the outcomes.“ We’ re getting 85 % response rates with the new machines we’ re using.”
For patients who had exhausted other options, those results
represented hope. The same was true for Spravato, a ketamine-derived treatment capable of producing rapid antidepressant effects for patients with severe depression and suicidal thinking.
For Dr. Roth, these weren’ t simply new technologies, they were opportunities to help people reclaim their lives.“ When I can restore people’ s sense of place, purpose and hope and reconnect them with their passions, that is so exciting,” he says.
Dr. Roth and his wife, Suzanne, who wed this past September, decided to move to Louisville in 2024 for two reasons. The first was family. The second was a problem they couldn’ t stop thinking about: the growing mental health crisis impacting young people and adults alike.
Their vision is to bring the latest evidence-based approaches in interventional psychiatry home to Louisville, the same approaches Dr. Roth learned from national leaders in the field during his years in San Francisco. Suzanne, who spent more than 30 years in global marketing for high-tech companies ranging from startups to large public companies, was ready to point her marketing and operational skills at something more personal and compassion-driven. Between her instincts and his clinical expertise, the opportunity was obvious, and Bluegrass Advanced Mental Health was born.
The clinic specializes in TMS and Spravato for treatment-resistant depression, postpartum and premenstrual depression, and OCD, alongside medication management for ADHD and anxiety disorders in children, adolescents and adults. And they’ re watching the research
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