Maydays! For Mental Health Month

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

You may know that these weekdays columns are in a nearly 4-year-long series titled, “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News.” If so, you may be wondering if titling a month-long series on mental health matters is redundant. I do not think so. Here’s why.

Using the term psychiatry generally and traditionally assumes trying to help or alleviate mental problems or, especially, DSM-5 disorders. That fits the typical general media focus on problems, risk, and the negative because that tends to grab the reader’s attention more than positive news because of our built-in stress response to danger, real or imagined.

Mental health focuses more on the positive, that of enhancing our mental well-being. Sometimes this is called positive psychiatry or positive psychology. There can be overlap on occasion with topics that relate to both illness and health. Perhaps ultimately, mental health and psychiatry will be—and should be—one long connected spectrum on the status of our brains and minds.

To illustrate, as May is Mental Health Awareness Month, here are some likely examples of upcoming columns:

• May 5: Mental Health Milestones on May 5th, My Birthday. This is not a column of narcissism about my birth, but an opportunity to point out some positive mental health milestones from that date in history.
• Mother’s Day for Their Crucial Role in Child Conception and Development
• The Start of the 2025 American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, with a Focus on Lifestyle Psychiatry
• Memorial Day for the Mourning of American Soldiers Lost in Battle
• Our Day of Life, Love, Death, and a Milestone. My family processes the birth of our son Evan Moffic, the anniversary love of our daughter Stacia and her husband Bill, the death of Grandpa Tam, and the milestone Bat Mitzvah of our granddaughter Mira Goldstein.

You get the picture and possibilities. So far, the most intriguing one for me has been the birth of Nellie Bly on May 5, 1867, and how she relates to the song Irving Berlin wrote for the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun, titled “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better).” Perhaps the challenging implications for women today connects right back to the life of Nellie Bly.

Other upcoming topics will likely relate to unpredictable daily news or other historical connections. Any other suggested associations welcomed.

Yesterday was May Day, as covered in our column. The rallies for workers, especially immigrants, are continuing tomorrow. We too are workers, and about half of us are burned out, too. Let’s rally to the occasion one way or another!

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.