When a mental health clinic, online referral service, or private practice offers “evidence-based” psychotherapy, that certainly sounds like a selling point. It suggests solid science supports the therapy offered — and that competing services lac…
Category: Psychiatry
So, how’s medical school?
Since starting medical school, I have struggled to answer this question. Because medical school is everything. It’s amazing, challenging, soul-sucking, life-giving, exhausting, dream-fulfilling, anxiety-provoking, interesting, and, dare I say, fun? How…
Considering CBD oil? This psychiatrist suggests these questions to ask first.
One question I get asked a lot lately is this: “Is it OK for me to use CBD oil?” First of all, CBD oil and associated preparations are types of alternative medications, medicines that might not be mainstream or readily prescribed by doctors, but are n…
I’m a residency program coordinator. My role has changed over the years.
I was a 22-year-old intern, just about to finish my public health internship. I had an ambitious career ahead of me. I was trained as a public health educator. I was doing wellness fairs, writing newsletters, and excited to get to the next stage of my …
I’m a jail physician. Here’s what likely happened to Jeffrey Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein’s apparent suicide while in custody at a Manhattan detention facility has focused intense media scrutiny into jail suicide prevention procedures. Suicide is the biggest cause of death in jails in the U.S. — by far. Because o…
The powerful, surreal scene in an El Paso hair salon
I am a psychiatrist living in El Paso. My husband was the orthopedic traumatologist on call at the academic center last weekend when 22 El Pasoans were murdered and 26 wounded in a mass shooting at a busy Walmart in town. The rest of this week has been…
The lingering effects of a mass shooting
Veronica Kelley was working at an office building across the street from the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif., in December 2015 when a county employee and his wife entered with semiautomatic rifles and opened fire, killing 14 and woundi…
The deadly silence of physician depression and suicide
“It is high time for us to recognize that the physicians who spend so much of their lives caring for us are often suffering in silence, and effective interventions would be good medicine for all of us.” – Joan M. Anzia, MD On February 4, 2007, I …
Dear emergency department clinicians: a letter from administration
Dear emergency department clinicians: We at the top of the administrative and regulatory chain understand that you deal with enormously complicated mental health and substance abuse patients all the time. Your resources are limited, and the demands pla…
Dear emergency department clinicians: a letter from administration
Dear emergency department clinicians: We at the top of the administrative and regulatory chain understand that you deal with enormously complicated mental health and substance abuse patients all the time. Your resources are limited, and the demands pla…
