Portraits

Thoughts on how we celebrate with our patients when they achieve a milestone in their work or convey a more finely tuned awareness of themselves.

“In most respects, my career as a psychiatrist working in community mental health has been ordinary. What is most surprising to me is that, I have come to define myself as a critical psychiatrist.”

I would not want to simply map the stars; I would also want to gaze upon them and contemplate the mystery of it all. Such is the 15-minute med check versus the essence of psychiatry.

autism

Dad excelled at his craft and was the natural choice for promotion to supervisor of the machine shop when the incumbent retired. But the company told him it just wouldn’t "look right" to have a person with only an 8th-grade education.

 Medicine university of Bucharest

Those last years of the Communist regime were met with literal darkness, collective trauma, and lack of food and free speech. Yet the peoples’ wicked, clandestine sense of humor cut through the despair and resilience rose from the ashes.

hopeless, sad, borderline

She was only 21. After "it" happened, I held a lecture on depression. I mentioned her at the end as a tribute. I longed for closure. More in this Portrait of a Psychiatrist.

Sometimes the work we are called to do is not what one traditionally expects. Be receptive to the “reason”-when the Sherpa knocks. More in this Portrait of a Psychiatrist.

heartbeat

On December 27, I learned that my pregnancy would not come to fruition with a baby for me. The healing process begins for me as it has for countless women before me. More in Portrait of a Psychiatrist.

A teaching moment never to be forgotten, little did the author know that this action on his patient's part would be the harbinger of an amazing career looking after physicians.

malpractice and psychiatry

A courageous piece that tells the story about a lawsuit that dragged on for nearly two decades after the sudden and unexpected death of this psychiatrist's patient.

discrimination

Truth be told, gender identity variations are not psychiatric disorders. That said, if you were there, what would you have done?