H. Steven Moffic, MD

Until my recent retirement, I never realized how much psychiatry had in common with dentistry. After all, long ago psychiatry threw its lot in with the rest of medicine—that is, general medicine, specialty medicine, and surgery.

Ethics in the field of mental health is a concern for every psychiatrist, but what happens when past patients reenter a retired clinician's life in a personal setting?

Retirement requires psychological preparation. The planning and anticipation in itself can sometimes bring even more happiness. This and other sage advice from Dr Steve Moffic.

In light of our problems and uncertainties about the state of current psychiatry, or perhaps because of them, what might describe good psychiatry? Following are some suggestions for what we, as psychiatrists, can do.

Psychism: In theosophy, the term psychism is used on rare occasions to refer to spiritual awakening. A spiritual awakening is indeed what we need, isn’t it?

In our current age of increasingly biological psychiatry, psychiatrists seem to be paying less and less attention to the humanities, even as internists and surgeons are paying more attention. So this gives me hope for the next generation of psychiatrists.

The trouble with answering this question is that I couldn’t – and still can’t – recall the “best” memory. What much more readily came to mind are some of the worst memories.

I can just sense the uproar now. Dr. Moffic wants state hospitals again? Has he lost it? Well, yes. I do, sort of. Here’s why.

My very first blog for Psychiatric Times, back in January 2010, was on the psychological aspects of “going green.” It turned out to be one of many articles I’ve written since on exploring the apparent resistance to address what I’ve come to call climate instability and global heating.

Just as a dog leaps onto its beloved owner, on this leap year, let me leap to my own surprised answer. Yes, dogs, indeed, may be man’s (and woman’s) best therapist at certain times and in certain situations.