COVID-19 has shed light on a pre-existing condition in medicine – our health care system has failed to tend to its workforce’s well-being. While generally privileged, physicians are an underserved population about their own mental health care. Nu…
Category: Psychiatry
Trauma is ever-present in the practice of medicine
Some forms of trauma are obvious: natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, fires, being physically assaulted, wrongfully terminated, becoming suddenly very ill. Trauma is divided into so-called big T and little t experiences, but the distinction is …
My Klonopin withdrawal story
It was September 11, 2001. My dad had cheated on my mom again, the building that I worked in at that time had received an anonymous tip that we were a potential target for the terrorist attacks, and my mom, who needed a reprieve from my dad’s crap, was…
Training in psychiatry would give me the opportunity to understand suicide far better
An excerpt from Becoming a Doctors’ Doctor: A Memoir. After about six months of my residency in internal medicine, I began to feel something was missing, though at the time I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then, after a series of general med…
A physician hung himself. That could have been me.
The mood hung in the air like a clenched jaw, a clenched fist, and slumped shoulders. I watched a fellow patient shuffle by the nurses’ station with his little paper cup. You know, the ones that are an inch or two tall and wide with a slight lip; the k…
COVID malaise, and more COVID-19 coping tips from the trenches
I write this now as both a time capsule and a vision of hope at the bitter end of 2020. At this point, a COVID-19 vaccine (the vision of hope) has been developed by several companies but has not yet received widespread distribution. Realistically, I kn…
A physician’s perspective on what therapy is
Therapy is a treatment intended to heal a disorder. That’s the medical perspective anyway, and it’s not wrong, but it’s maybe only part of the picture. Therapy frequently begins by addressing a primary complaint or problem in a collaborative relationsh…
When an epidemic of violence against health care workers meets a pandemic [PODCAST]
“The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated factors that cause violence in the workplace. At no time in recent history will you find clinical health care workers under this degree of stress. Physicians and nurses are operating under high alert in hosp…
Long-term sequelae of a life in medicine
It’s a Friday in January 1997. Another two-week block of nights behind me, 75 hours a week with a weekend off in between. However, working 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. means waking at 4 p.m. to dress, grab 15 hours-worth of food, drive 20 minutes to the parking de…
Physician burnout during COVID: Bringing ancient practices to modern medicine
Back in January of 2020, the average physician burnout rate was a staggering 42 percent. However, as COVID cases continue to surge, that statistic is now undoubtedly larger. Physicians are exhausted, both physically and mentally. They’ve watched col…
