Dr. Lewis E. Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, DFAPA

Expert Publications

• Comparison of ketorolac-chlorpromazine with meperidine-promethazine for treatment of exacerbations of chronic pain.
• Birth risk and culture.
• Hypnosis to facilitate uncomplicated birth.
• Prevalence of psychiatric diagnoses among frequent users of rural emergency medical services.
• Postpartum streptococcal toxic shock.
• Frequent users of rural primary care: comparisons with randomly selected users.
• Native American medicine in the treatment of chronic illness: developing an integrated program and evaluating its effectiveness.

Clinical Trials

• Micronutrients as Adjunctive Treatment for Bipolar Disorder

Media Releases

Get to know Psychiatrist Dr. Lewis E. Mehl-Madrona, who serves patients in Orono, Maine. 

Dr. Mehl-Madrona is a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in the areas of family and geriatric medicine, general psychiatry, and neuropsychology. He is the Executive Director of the Coyote Institute in Orono, Maine.

He has been studying traditional healing and healers since his early days and has written about their work and the process of healing. His primary focus has been upon Cherokee and Lakota traditions, though he has also explored other Plains Cultures and those of Northeastern North America. His goal is to bring the wisdom of indigenous peoples about healing back into mainstream medicine and to transform medicine and psychology through this wisdom coupled with more European derived narrative traditions.  

His current interests center around psychosis and its treatment within community and with non-pharmacological means, narrative approaches to chronic pain and its use in primary care, and further developing healing paradigms within a narrative/indigenous framework.  

At present, Dr. Mehl-Madrona teaches with the family medicine residency at Eastern Maine Medical Center (EMMC) in Bangor, where he does inpatient medicine, outpatient precepting, and obstetrics. He works in consultation-liaison psychiatry at EMMC and also at Acadia Hospital.  

He has been on the faculties of several medical schools, most recently as associate professor of family medicine at the University of New England. He continues to work with aboriginal communities to develop uniquely aboriginal styles of healing and health care for use in those communities. He is interested in the relation of healing through dialogue in community and psychosis. 

In regards to his educational background, Dr. Mehl-Madrona graduated from Stanford University School of Medicine and trained in family medicine, psychiatry, and clinical psychology. He completed his residencies in family medicine and psychiatry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, and his alcohol research post-doctoral fellowship at U.C. at Berkeley Public Health and Prevention Research Center. He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Clinical Psychology from the Psychological Studies Institute in Palo Alto in 1980 and a Master of Philosophy degree in Narrative Practices from Massey University in 2007.

A Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (DFAPA), he is board-certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN). The ABPN is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to serving the professions of psychiatry and neurology.

Furthermore, he is board-certified in family medicine and geriatric medicine by the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM). The ABFM is a non-profit, independent medical association of American physicians who practice in family medicine and its sub-specialties.

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behavior, cognition, and perceptions. Psychiatrists evaluate, diagnose, and treat patients with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. They conduct thorough psychiatric evaluations, develop treatment plans, prescribe medication, and evaluate treatment results.

An expert in his field, Dr. Mehl-Madrona is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom, a trilogy of books on what Native culture has to offer the modern world.  He has also written Narrative Medicine, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story: the Promise of Narrative Psychiatry & his most recent book with Barbara Mainguy, Remapping Your Mind: the Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story. 

He writes a regular column for Futurehealth.org, in which he contributes his insights to modern psychiatry, the frustrations of health care and alternative ways of seeing mental illness.

On a more personal note, he speaks several languages, including English, Spanish, and French.

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