Two board-certified physicians, Drs. Molly Roberts and Bruce Roberts, have been offering holistic medicine to patients at their midtown location at 1701 E. Lind Road, for about 10 years.

Molly is certified in family medicine, holistic medicine and nutritional medicine, and is both a psychotherapist and an ordained Shamanic minister. 

Print this story Email this story Post a Comment (Use arrows above to view more photos) ADVERTISEMENT

The couple is now heading in a new direction. They have co-founded Lighthearted Medicine, which they said "grew out of our understanding that when true healing has come, the world is a joyful place to be." They launched it in January with a new website (www.lightheartedmedicine.com). The goal of this new direction is to expand holistic medicine information to a broader audience via books, DVDs and speaking engagements throughout the country.

What steered them away from traditional medicine and toward holistic medicine, Molly said, was the recognition that "we couldn’t separate out mind, body and spirit. With traditional medicine, you have the eight-minute appointment with the patient presenting a complaint, and you don’t look at the patient’s mental state — maybe their divorce is having something to do with neck pain they’re having."

Holistic medicine is definitely growing — both in Tucson and nationwide — Molly said. Holistic practices are often widely accepted and then become part of traditional medicine, she said, but everyone forgets the practice’s holistic roots. She pointed to chiropractic care — now often covered by health insurers — as an example.

The couple’s patients include a mixture of people — some from Tucson, but many who come here from all over the United States.

Molly, originally from Rochester, N.Y., first came to Tucson in 1984 to get a master’s degree in rehabilitative counseling. She spent some time in San Diego but came back to Tucson because she said it just felt like home.

"It’s such a friendly place," Molly said. "It’s laid-back, people are really accepting of differences."

Molly believes Tucson is a mecca for integrative medicine, partly because of Dr. Andrew Weil being here. But she pointed out that Weil also was attracted to Tucson from elsewhere. "Different cities have different feelings," Molly said. "You just have a feeling it’s a little bit more open here and this helps people to question things." She said Tucson was one of the birthplaces of the HMO system, reflecting its openness to new things.

Previously, the couple focused almost solely on individual patients. Molly, who is a moderator with the American Holistic Medical Association, also provides treatment to upscale clients at Canyon Ranch Health Resort. But because of the complications of dealing with health insurance carriers and determining how treatments need to be billed, Molly said they would have had to hire a special employee just to handle those aspects.

"We pretty much did 9-to-5 hours, but when somebody came, we’d set aside a whole afternoon or a whole morning for them," Molly said. "At times, it has taken six hours to go through everything. For a lot of people, it was the first time anyone had actually heard all of it. That is very helpful for one person at a time, but then there are all these other people who are yearning for information."

Everyone agrees that preventive care makes a difference, Molly said, but most insurance companies aren’t yet willing to pay for it. And when the Robertses devote so much time to one patient, they do need to charge patients more than the typical co-payment.

"That’s part of our evolution," she said. "We want the information about holistic medicine to be available to everyone out there."

Her husband, Bruce, is also a certified Shamanic minister and is certified in family medicine, psychiatry and holistic medicine. The two doctors describe Shamanism as an ancient philosophy of using "powerful healing techniques" that bring together mind, body and spirit.