“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.” – Fred Rogers Cheslie Kryst, a former Miss USA, lawyer, and entertainment correspondent, died by suicide. She was smart, beautiful,…
Category: Psychiatry
Recovering from burnout: a permission to pivot
From 2013 to 2017, I was in the Air Force, selected to become an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, and would soon embark on my residency journey to get there. Up until this point, my educational path was linear. I completed undergrad and committed to den…
Why do we obsess and repeat?
An excerpt from Heart Medicine: How to Stop Painful Patterns and Find Peace and Freedom–at Last. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. For many months, Leila could not stop ruminating about the fateful event of s…
Mental health and the balance between technology and the human touch [PODCAST]
“The reality of the last two years is that almost all of us have experienced some mental health disorder symptoms, and that mental and physical health are equally important components of overall health. We call these subclinical symptoms, or symp…
Autism spectrum disorder and the masks we wear
In the ongoing saga of the pandemic, there is the debate whether to wear a mask or not. These are physical masks that temporarily hide our face, but we all wear another type of mask, a metaphorical mask. These are the masks we put on to present who we …
The pandemic drives a decline in teen substance abuse
The percentage of teens using illicit substances dropped significantly in 2021 as the pandemic forced them into isolation from friends, classrooms, and extracurricular activities. Alcohol, marijuana, and nicotine vaping – the most commonly used substan…
“Doctor, you have been duped”
“Doctor, you’ve been duped,” she said as she took slow, careful breaths of oxygen from the heated high-flow nasal cannula. These were definitely not the words I was expecting to hear. Responding to the perplexed look on my face, she a…
A physician’s self-care song [PODCAST]
“No matter what, your healing work matters. No one should tell you otherwise, and nothing can change that, not even a shortcoming. You provide healing in a way no one else can. Care for yourself, and you can be the healer you truly wish to be.…
The status quo is failing people with opioid use disorder
As we anticipated the release of new CDC data on overdose deaths, those of us who specialize in substance use disorders braced for grim statistics, but this milestone was still shocking: over 100,000 lives lost to overdoses in one year, the great major…
From the prison of my job to freedom
It became a prison to me — impending doom. I knew I had only three months left before I could retire. Three months isn’t long, but it is a lifetime away. That long drive to work in that heavy highway traffic where there was always a collision. Th…
