“I’m in a constant state of fear.” “I have nothing to look forward to now.” “I don’t know when my life will go back to normal.” As a psychiatrist practicing in a busy urban academic medical center, I have started to see the toll that the COVID-19 pande…
We are all traumatized by the unfathomable devastation caused by the coronavirus. What can we expect as a result of this national and worldwide trauma? The trauma approach uses posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as a frame to understand trauma. PTSD…
As death tolls rise from the global spread of a novel coronavirus, I have observed an increase in anxiety among my patients. I am writing this article to provide physicians with tips on how to help their patients cope with anxiety from the coronavirus….
This essay is for my colleagues. When I say “colleagues,” I am referring to all health care workers who are currently working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis or are engaging in patient care at any level. This might be an unconventional essay c…
It took some getting used to in dealing with Mae. My main function soon became acting as her bookkeeper. Each month, I would write checks for her. She was illiterate, and signing her name was about all she could do. Mae was a fairly ordinary looking la…
The social media posts exhaust me. I see parents with colorful schedules for children to abide by during this pandemic and others who have made a zillion fabric masks to donate. Meanwhile, I’m trying to test the technology to see patients from my new …
Correna is full of simplistic Henny Youngman-type one-liners (many of you readers, I understand, may never have heard of the comic, Henny Youngman, but no matter). But her one-liners are not particularly funny. She might say as we drive along, “I…
I’ve been telecommuting for two weeks, and I already feel like Bill Murray’s character in the film Groundhog Day. A college friend of mine had a term for this feeling—déjà movie. I ease into my day with the repetitive normalcy of feeding th…
It was 2013. High-tech entrepreneurs were excitedly “disrupting” industries, bringing goods and services closer to users. Uber replaced cabs, Kickstarter replaced investors, and telehealth companies offered convenient, at-home medical care over smartph…
On March 19th, the federal government loosened regulations around methadone and buprenorphine, two medications used to treat opioid addiction. The change was triggered by the novel coronavirus and concerns that current practices would either contribute…
