I was always worried about doing well on board exams. I didn’t want to simply pass them; I wanted to excel. Before I took exams, rumor had it that a person would have to intentionally fail Step 1, 2, or 3 and that failing Step 2 CS was virtually impossible. The truth, I learned, is […]
The face of a 2-year-old Honduran girl, dwarfed by the adults who only appear as legs in the photo, communicates undeniable anguish. Used to represent the horror of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, the photo became a lightning rod for controversy when it turned out that this particular child was not […]
“Expressers significantly underestimated how surprised recipients would be about why expressers were grateful, overestimated how awkward recipients would feel, and underestimated how positive recipients would feel.” – Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation The past 30 days have been unusual because of the number of professional gestures of gratitude I’ve received: I received […]
When did it become a bragging right to say that you only get four or five hours of sleep a night? We would think it is ridiculous for someone to brag that their labs came back with only half the normal hemoglobin level as we would recognize that as clearly unhealthy. So when did we […]
Adapted from Understanding Antidepressants. In his often-quoted beginning of Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” If we stretch this notion a little — going from families to individuals, and from unhappiness to depression — we come up with an interesting question, which is […]
Physicians all around us are dying from suicide. For me, some deceased colleagues I knew more closely, others were faces that you would pass on the wards. Even two physicians that I knew peripherally died just this past week. The issue of physician suicide is in the news now, and facts are available. At least […]
“The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die. ” — David Foster Wallace in an interview by David Lipsky Recent physician-suicides and all those before were committed by people; people caught in an organization rigged against them — one that breeds new and exacerbates existing, mental […]
My second foray into Suboxone treatment has evolved in a way I had not expected, but I think I have stumbled onto something profound. Almost six months into our in-house clinic’s existence, I have found myself prescribing and adjusting treatment for about half of my medication-assisted treatment (MAT) patients for co-occurring anxiety, depression, bipolar disease […]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 63,632 individuals died in 2016 as a result of drug overdose. Among these, 66 percent died from opioid overdose. The statistics are derived from in-depth research that was carried out by the research institute in 2016. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that cases […]
Just like so many teenagers out there, I found myself hooked on the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why from the first episode. The only difference is that I am not a teenager, but a physician practicing child and adolescent psychiatry and managing inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric units for the last nine years. I was […]
