Since 1979 when she completed her graduate degrees in education and mental health counseling at Tulane University and her clinical internship at the Manhattan Children’s Psychiatric Center in New York, Paula Norris has devoted her professional life to helping patients deal effectively with a wide variety of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety disorders, chronic and post-traumatic stress, alcohol and substance abuse, and marital and family challenges. She is the owner of Springfield Wellness, LLC, an outpatient mental health clinic she founded in 2005 to treat chemical dependency and depression using the Brain Restoration Plus (BR+) nutritionally assisted detoxification process in combination with other therapies. With her husband, Dr. Richard Mestayer, III, she developed the BR+ protocols and, with him, has the distinction of administering intravenous NAD to more than 800 patients as of 2014. From 2001-2005 she was the founder and president of Equipoise Wellness, Center, Inc., an outpatient clinic providing adult psychotherapy and also offering the Neurotransmission Restoration (NTR) nutritional detoxification process for chemical dependency and acute and chronic stress. From 1980 through 2005 she was a contract Psychotherapist at the Ochsner Foundation Hospital Stress Treatment/Behavioral Medicine and Chemical Dependency units and, through 1991, she was a state-certified supervisor of graduate student interns for Master’s of Counseling programs. Since 1980, her private practice has focused on sub-acute patients with psycho-physiological, panic/anxiety, affective and character disorders, alcohol/substance abuse, weight and stress management, and marital and family problems.
She is experienced in the use of psychotherapy with an eclectic orientation in both acute and sub-acute psychiatric settings, including an open unit of a hospital psychiatric unit and a variety of residential and non-residential treatment programs. She has applied her expertise in mind-body psychotherapy using cognitive, emotive, and behavioral models in both individual and group sessions for interventions in stress management, post-traumatic stress, co-dependency, and grief. She also possesses expertise in patient treatment and delivery of BR+ detoxification from chemical dependency, which she introduced to the U.S. In fact, she has been administering NAD and BR+ IV treatment longer than anyone in the country. She continues to engage in research into the uses of NAD in delivery of BR+ protocols.
Norris’s papers and presentations include “Clinical Trials of Neurotransmission Restoration” at the California Association of Alcohol and Drug Educators (CAADE), Costa Mesa, CA, April 2008; “Amino Acid-based Nutritional Supplementation Facilitates Abrupt Cessation (‘Stopping Cold Turkey’) of Substance Use By Addiction Patients. Reduction of Withdrawal Symptoms With Minimal Abuse Potential” at the Society for Neuroscience Conference, Washington, D.C., November 2008; and “Intravenous Administration of NAD Significantly Reduces Self-Reported Cravings Routinely Associated with Opiate and Alcohol Withdrawal” at the Society for Neuroscience Conference in Washington, D.C., November 2014.
Norris is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), a Fellow of the American Psychotherapy Association (FAPA), the American Counseling Association (ACA), and the Louisiana Counseling Association. She has also held memberships and certifications of the International Society of Clinical Hypnosis, the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, PAIRS Foundation for Marital Family Therapy, ADTR (American Dance Therapist Registry)-certified in creative arts therapy and a certified Low-Level Laser Technician.