About
“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”
Sir William Osler
Natural Mind MD is focused on providing psychiatric services with an emphasis on overall mental and physical health and well being.
Dr. Ria Battaglino is a Board Certified Adult Psychiatrist that provides medication management and psychotherapy from an integrative perspective. Her goal is to help her patients to achieve optimal mental health via a holistic approach that addresses each individual’s physical, mental and spiritual health. Her belief is that mental health and emotional perspective heavily influence physical health and vice-versa. Dr. Battaglino addresses the complex psychiatric issues that arise from this interaction to help you feel your best emotionally and physically.
Services are provided from a place of deep respect for the patient’s perspective that incorporate holistic and integrative practices.
Services include initial psychiatric evaluation, psychotherapy, medication management and combined medication management and psychotherapy as well as ketamine assisted psychotherapy. Dr. Battaglino and trained psychedelic integration psychotherapists provide ketamine assisted psychotherapy as well as psychedelic harm reduction. Dr. Battaglino is also one of the few doctors in the world trained to treat stuttering medically.
Dr. Ria Battaglino
Ria Battaglino, MD, FAPA, is a board certified psychiatrist practicing in Cary, NC. She graduated from Wake Forest University with a B.S. in Biology, medical school from UMDNJ in Newark, NJ and internship and psychiatry residency at University of California, Irvine. She has extensive psychiatric experience working in hospitals as well as community psychiatry, university based practice and private practice. Dr. Battaglino opened and served as medical director of Natural Mind MD in 2014 after moving from CA to NC. Dr. Battaglino has been a part of the NC Medical Society, NC Medical Society Alliance, Wake County Medical Society, American Psychiatric Association, NC Psychiatric Association, American Psychedelic Practitioners Association, amongst other interest/professional groups. She has also received the honor of being named a Fellow to the APA (FAPA) which reflects her dedication to the psychiatric profession and volunteer work with the underserved.
Along with her passion for western medicine, Dr. Battaglino has always been interested in incorporating other modalities of healing into her practice.
She has traveled widely, living within and gaining knowledge of other cultures and healing traditions. While in medical school, Dr. Battaglino formed the first cross cultural and integrative medicine group and elective for medical students. In residency in California, she was able to create the first “Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Psychiatry” resident training rotation with an emphasis on mental health while at the Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine. Ria Battaglino also formed the first “Psychiatry and Spirituality” rotation at UCI studying under several renowned doctors, psychologists, and clergy in the field of religion and psychology. Additionally, she has worked closely and continues to study with well known, established professionals in the fields of naturopathy, nutrition, acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine, meditation, and spirituality within the framework of psychiatry, general medical health and psychedelic medicine.
Having taken care of many patients with what Western medicine terms as “treatment resistant” disorders such as PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, OCD and many other ailments that traditional medicine has found it difficult to treat, Dr B has found passion and fulfillment in researching and providing psychedelic assisted psychotherapy for many of these conditions. For the last several years, Dr B has been studying and traveling extensively to pursue trainings with leading training institutions as well as experienced teachers/healers in psychedelic and plant medicine and ketamine assisted psychotherapy (KAP). Namely she has studied with Polaris Insight and Fluence and is obtaining her certificate in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research from the California Institute of Integral Studies as well as finishing her MAPS training in MDMA in 2022/2023. Dr. Battaglino has benefited from learning from leaders in the field, including Bill Richards, Ph.D., lead psychologist at Johns Hopkins psychedelic research group, and Dr. Michael and Annie Mithoefer, clinical supervisors for the MAPS MDMA trials amongst others.
Dr. B has been voted one of the Best Psychiatrists of the Triangle by INDY weekly and volunteers to provide therapy to health care providers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as with free religious medical clinics. She has also been featured in HEALTH magazine, Longevity magazine, Well+Good and other local and national publications for her knowledge of integrative psychiatry. Dr. Battaglino has given presentations to various local and national groups on holistic psychiatry, women’s health and accessing healing from within.
Handpicked as one of the Top 3 Psychiatrists in Cary, North Carolina
– ThreeBest Rated, 2024
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