An important milestone was marked here in the Twin Cities on February 17th, 2022. Alltyr Clinic closed as founder and CEO, Mark Willenbring, MD, retires from clinical practice. The community is losing a hero and fierce champion for high quality, science-based mental health and co-occurring addiction psychiatry.
I want to express a sincere thank you to Mark Willenbring. He has been a friend, mentor, and supervisor over the last 10 years and has helped thousands of people achieve recovery from mental health and substance use disorders throughout his career. I remember first reading an interview he did with the online magazine, The Fix, about using medications in the treatment of addiction. I read through the interview quietly mumbling “YES! Right on! WOW!” as he talked about the importance of letting science guide clinical care, instead of stigma and bias. I was surprised and excited to learn that his newly-formed clinic was based in my hometown. I decided, on a whim, to send him and email, introduce myself, and invite him to lunch; to my surprise, he replied yes, and eventually invited me to train with him and help develop the new model he was working on. We made a good team and over the course of the next several years our clinic developed a strong national reputation. What’s more, we began to attract incredible clinicians who shared a similar vision for person centered care. Dr Willenbring was featured in articles like this one, that led hundreds of people to reach out for a new kind of help for their problems, and he was eventually profiled in the New York Times science section for Alltyr’s cutting edge approach that offered a true alternative to traditional treatment.
For Mark Willenbring, Substance Abuse Treatment Begins With Research
A psychiatrist, countering rehabilitation programs that see abuse as a defect, instead sees a medical condition …
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The Bad Science of Alcoholics Anonymous – Gabrielle Glaser
Its faith-based 12-step program dominates treatment in the United States. But researchers have debunked central …
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Those 10 years were truly transformational, and it is exciting to see that more people are receiving individualized care than ever before. Dr Willenbring has been instrumental in promoting life-saving treatments that improved the lives of countless people here in Minnesota, across the US and beyond. At times, Dr Willenbring has been called bombastic – unafraid to rattle cages and point out hypocrisy. I imagine that if you had been working to spread the same message for 40 years, watching as people were dying needlessly because of the stigma and ignorance of key decision-makers, you too would become bombastic and unafraid to rattle some cages. Thank you, Dr Willenbring, for your care and dedication to this important task.
Best wishes to Dr. Willenbring and his wife and Kate in their new endeavors and we all look forward to hearing more about what they do next to continue to transform care across the US.