A Look at BrightQuest San Diego’s Nutrition Program

We sat down with BrightQuest San Diego’s Lead Dietitian, Madeleine McLean RD, CEDS, CDCES, to learn more about the relationship between food and mental health. This Q&A is a great way to learn more about our approach to food and nutrition as well as how our multidisciplinary team works together to best support each client.  

Why is nutrition such an important part of comprehensive mental health care? 

The impact of nutrition on both physical and mental health is vast, and we continue to learn more about the role nutrition plays in brain health every day. I often tell my clients, “You can have the best treatment in the world, but if your brain isn’t getting the energy and nourishment it needs—and you’re not getting adequate, restorative sleep—it can be much harder to fully engage in and benefit from that treatment.”

Nutrition provides the energy and nutrients necessary for the brain to function, regulate mood, support cognition, and respond to stress. There is also a growing body of research exploring the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, including how the gut and brain communicate through complex chemical, physiological, and biological pathways. Ultimately, nutrition is not separate from mental health care—it is one of the foundations that helps support it.  

BrightQuest takes an anti-diet approach and believes that all foods are “safe foods.” What does that philosophy look like in practice, and why is it important for clients? 

We live in a culture that constantly tells us what is “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong,” when it comes to food, movement, and the way we care for our bodies. Those messages can create rigid rules that ultimately pull us further away from ourselves and from our ability to recognize and respond to our own needs.  

At BrightQuest, our Nutrition Program works toward replacing those external rules with curiosity, flexibility, body attunement, and credible nutrition education. Food is nourishment, but it also carries social, cultural, emotional, and personal meaning. When we assign morality to food, it can create fear, guilt, or shame around eating. Those emotions can make it much more difficult to recognize and respond to hunger, fullness, preferences, and other signals from our bodies.  

Calling all foods “safe foods” does not mean that every food meets every person’s nutritional needs in every circumstance. Rather, it means we are working to remove unnecessary fear and moral judgment from food so clients can develop a more flexible, trusting, and sustainable relationship with eating.  

Many people come to treatment with a complicated relationship with food, their bodies, or movement. How do you begin helping someone rebuild that relationship? 

Many people don’t initially realize they have a complicated relationship with food or their bodies because so many disordered thoughts and behaviors have become normalized in our culture. Rebuilding that relationship often begins with creating awareness: What have I been taught to believe about food, my body, and movement? Where did those beliefs come from? And do I actually want to continue carrying them?  

Society can make it seem inevitable that we should dislike something about our bodies, constantly pursue weight loss, or push ourselves to exercise in ways we don’t enjoy. Part of recovery is recognizing that these messages are not necessarily truths—they are beliefs we have been given, and we have a choice about whether we continue to live by them.  

A significant part of healing is learning that you can have a relationship with yourself that is grounded in respect rather than criticism, and in curiosity rather than control.  

What happens during an individual nutrition counseling session at BrightQuest, and how do you develop an individualized nutrition plan for each client? 

Every nutrition session looks a little different because each client comes to treatment with their own history, needs, strengths, and areas of growth. Those areas may include disordered eating or eating disorder recovery, nutrition-related life skills such as cooking and budgeting, body image, digestive concerns, medical nutrition therapy, or simply developing a more consistent and supportive relationship with food.  

After the initial assessment and first few sessions, the client and I typically develop a clearer understanding of what they need and which counseling approaches and interventions are most effective for them. We consider their current level of care, treatment goals, readiness for change, living environment, and goals for life after treatment. From there, nutrition care becomes a collaborative process rather than a one-size-fits-all plan. 

Nutrition challenges can look very different from person to person. How does your team support clients dealing with issues such as disordered eating, malnutrition, digestive concerns, diabetes, or food allergies while also addressing their mental health needs? 

The short answer is: it is all connected. Mental health and nutritional concerns don’t exist in separate silos, and an important part of recovery is often helping clients recognize those connections.  

I have the privilege of working alongside some incredibly skilled clinicians who understand that basic needs need to be supported before someone can fully engage in intensive trauma processing or other significant changes in treatment. Adequate nourishment, medical stability, sleep, and other foundational needs can directly influence someone’s ability to participate in and benefit from mental health treatment.  

Our team takes an integrated approach to care. We consider how a client’s nutritional, medical, and mental health experiences influence one another, and we communicate across disciplines to make sure those needs are being addressed together rather than independently. 

How does the nutrition team collaborate with therapists, psychiatrists, and other members of a client’s treatment team to make sure nutrition care is integrated into the larger treatment plan? 

One of the things that makes BrightQuest particularly unique is how integrated the nutrition team is within the broader clinical, medical, and operations teams. Nutrition is not treated as a separate service that a client accesses in isolation. There is a nutrition team member present in nearly all of our major treatment and operational meeting spaces, which creates frequent opportunities for communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.  

That level of integration allows us to identify concerns early, share observations across disciplines, and make recommendations that support clients throughout the entire treatment environment. It also means that nutrition can be considered alongside the client’s mental health, medical needs, daily functioning, and long-term goals—rather than as a separate piece of their care.