Category: Psychiatry

A physician who lost his daughter

The day is etched in my memory. The knock at the door. Two detectives and one police officer. I knew the news was bad. We sat at our dinner table, and the dreaded words came: “Your daughter is dead.” “How?” I asked. “She hung herself during the night.”…

Qualifying conditions for medical marijuana

An excerpt from The Medical Marijuana Guide: Cannabis and Your Health. Despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services applied for a patent on cannabinoids as neuroprotectants and antioxidants in 1999 and was granted that patent …

Inaction is driving our collective burnout

I sat knee-to-knee with a nurse practitioner at a school-based clinic in rural Ohio. Choking back tears, she described a patient she couldn’t get out of her head: a middle-school girl, accompanied by her mother and a social worker. Just days prior, the…

Doctors and nurses are made to suffer

An excerpt from Please Don’t Die. While I was still writing this book, a local doctor killed himself.  This was a younger psychiatrist with a successful practice, leaving three children after shooting himself in the head.  What do you imagine his…

How near-death experiences profoundly change lives

An excerpt from The Science of Near-Death Experiences. Near-death experiences are an ancient and very common phenomenon that spans from ancient philosophy, religion, and healing to the most modern clinical practice of medicine. Modern advances in medic…

KevinMD’s 2018 top posts: Highlighting the voices of practicing clinicians

With over 22 million page views for the year, thank you for making 2018 such a success. KevinMD continues to be the web’s leading platform that highlights the voice of the many who intersect with our health care system, but are rarely heard elsew…

It’s easier to get a gun than a psychiatrist in America

America in 2018: 307 mass shootings in 311 days. Recently, a veteran with presumed PTSD shot up Borderline Bar & Grill. His Facebook declaration: I hope people call me insane… (laughing emojis).. wouldn’t that just be a big ball of irony? Yeah.. I’…

Doctor’s orders: Follow these 6 tips to avoid holiday stress

For many of us, “the most wonderful time of the year” is anything but. If we let the holiday season get the better of us, we can find ourselves overeating, overspending, and over-extending from now through New Year’s Eve. Holiday stress has real health…

A medical student takes a look into the abyss. Here’s what he learned.

After my surgery rotation, I was in a very bad place. I felt like two months of grueling work hours and relentless studying were wiped away in an instant by a bad test score. That single number somehow mattered more to me than every positive comment I …

5 ways we can prevent doctor suicide

For Meg — with sorrow. We have failed to address the scale of suicide and mental illness in the medical profession, which is a global issue. Each of us can help prevent doctor suicide with these five strategies at a locally and worldwide: 1. We can des…