A young man’s life is over too soon. He had been seen more than four times by more than ten different physicians and in four different clinical settings in the two weeks leading up to his death. Each time he was accompanied by a concerned loved o…
Category: Psychiatry
Think beyond benzodiazepines for anxiety
An excerpt from Understanding Medicines for Anxiety. Although the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) are among the most widely prescribed medicines for depression, they also have a useful role to play in treating anxiety disorders. In this…
The suffocation of social isolation
Literature surrounding the effects of social isolation and loneliness for older adults is no longer lacking. Studies and articles outlining the dreadful consequences of these epidemics have even pierced large media outlets like Time magazine, where the…
Understanding the backlash to gaming disorder
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently announced the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases will have a new code: gaming disorder. For those who eagerly await play-by-play updates to ICD codes, this may be old information. …
Doctors die. But the good ones leave a legacy.
In family medicine residency back in the early 2000s, we had a then-novel curriculum in narrative medicine. During inpatient rounds, we would sometimes get a few minutes to write down our thoughts about a patient’s experience. I remember how cath…
Are benzodiazepines “the worst thing that’s ever happened to people”?
Although Arnold Knutsen and I “met” virtually five years ago, we only first spoke on the phone recently when he called to share his story. He’s the eldest member of the online benzodiazepine support group we cohabitate. His posts in t…
A psychiatric hospital in Uganda: a medical student’s reflection
I excel at intellectualization. It is a fickle defense mechanism, allowing the observer to fully comprehend the situation in front of them without fully engaging in the emotional context. Throughout my medical training, intellectualization has aided me…
The default for psychiatric patients: “Send them to the ER”
Here is a standard emergency department situation, played out all across America today. Patient X has schizophrenia. He takes medication, but only until he feels better. He is calm when he takes it, but sometimes aggressive and assaultive when out of…
Treating schizophrenia with long-acting injectables
It happens all too often. You have not been taking good care of yourself. You don’t eat, you sleep poorly, and you neglect your medical health. Over months or sometimes years, you begin to isolate yourself from your friends and family. You can’t seem t…
The end of a life never just impacts the individual who died
To my knowledge, three people who were under my care killed themselves. The first was a young man — late 20s, maybe? — who I met while I was a psychiatry intern. He was hospitalized in the psychiatric unit where I had just started my rotati…
