To know our history is to predict our future. We’ve been here before. To be more specific, we were in this very position in 1920. It was an election year amidst a pandemic, the Spanish flu that began in 1918. The Republican nominee, Warren Harding, cla…
“Aunty blew her brains out a few weeks ago!” Words I shall never forget. For weeks, she had been in my thoughts. But I never called her. I didn’t because of all the myriad reasons we often give ourselves for not checking up on each other. In my case, t…
Unprecedented. How many times have we heard that word? Yet, here we balance between the life we knew and the life we long for with the deep, frightening chasm of the unknown strikingly in between. 2020 has not only been one for the history books; it ha…
Narcissism is a term that has roots in Greek mythology, and as the story goes, a nymph named Echo fell in love with a handsome young man named Narcissus, who loved nobody but himself. Echo had previously been cursed by a vengeful goddess who took from …
An excerpt from Medical Myths: A Sceptic’s Journey. “Don’t go out tonight, ‘Cos it’s bound to change your life, There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise.” – Creedence Clearwater Revival, August 1969 On a summer’s night on the St. Lawrence…
At a recent annual exam for one of us (Walter), the medical assistant had checked heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and oxygen saturation. Inquiring cheerfully about the Fifth Vital Sign, she flashed the 10-point pain scale of emojis ranging fro…
“I have been depressed. I have been burned out. I have been both. I have been neither. How do you know if you are depressed vs. burned out when your chief complaint is, “I feel like crap?” It’s time to call a consult. I don’t mean curbsiding your…
Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection, has recently been re-released with a new cover and subtitle: 10th Anniversary edition, Including New Tools to Make the Work Your Own. I’ve had my original paperback copy for 8 years. It’s dog-eared, highl…
Have you ever watched a movie, television show, or read a book where the villain is a medical doctor? If you are a psychiatrist, you will be alarmed by how many times the villain in these stories turns out to be a psychiatrist. In all fairness, psychia…
I used to work with veterans who sought mental health care. Many developed PTSD after witnessing their comrades get injured, blown up, and die. Some of these veterans had visible wounds, as one would expect, but almost all of them had invisible wounds….
