Psychiatrists

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In 1987 I started my psychiatry residency. Since then, they have changed the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual three times and it still does not seem to be keeping up with how fast the world is changing around me.

I one saw lots of “lethargic” depressions. Slow and sleepy “ain’t got no energy” depressions. “I feel like a human blob” kind of depressions.

Now most of them turn out to be Type II (“adult onset”) sugar diabetes or the thyroid just stopped working for some creative reason. Read more on Then and Now…

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I tend to obsess about my patients.

Especially the ones who have chosen prescription psychiatric drugs over natural alternative substances. I always give a choice when it is possible — and it often is.

Of course, I must often rely on research that has been done in other countries. I have gotten used to doing this. I can’t say it bothers me terribly much.

I believe in science. Read more on Patients Should Not Die — Especially Psych Patients…

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A fair amount of psychiatric illnesses have a genetic component.

Being formally “diagnosed” by a doctor does not make them official.

It is hard to tell when a woman says “my mother was probably depressed and anxious” what was going on. There may be a genetic component. Read more on Family Histories…

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I have vivid memories of the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard, where they let me hang around when I was still in high school but trying to learn some very fascinating things about medicine and science.

There was a hall lined on both sides with pictures of famous doctors who had made great contributions,

One of my favorites was Sir William Osler, a pioneer in Medical Education who spoke several wonderful aphorisms that were supposed to condense medical knowledge into some sort of easy to swallow bits. Read more on How To Increase STEM…

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My preceptor in Kansas taught me — while I was finishing my training and in my psychopharmacology fellowship — how to do “ECT”, which stands for “Electroconvulsive therapy.”

AKA: Electroshock therapy Read more on Yes They Can Still Force Electroshock Therapy…

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My medical career has so far encompassed training in multiple specialties (general and orthopedic surgery, neurological surgery, neurology, psychiatry, and psychopharmacology). I have practiced in France, Canada, the United States Army, and more States of the United States than I can name.

I have been sexually assaulted and harassed more times that I could count. “Bullying,” is common in medicine, often viewed as a necessary process of “toughening up” to deal with the all too frequent tragedies lived with by patients. Read more on Me Too…

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Psychiatry is an imperfect science at best. It is by no means a “pseudoscrience,” although it is frequently blamed for being same.

I have known LOTS of honest, decent people who have (I think, sincerely) seen psychiatric research as a difficult attempt to elucidate truth about the human animal. Read more on The “Crazies” are not very violent…

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I believed once that the U.S. military was a noble and distinguished place. Not that any of my direct lineage (or collateral relatives, for that matter) had ever served. My father was rated a 4F by the draft in WWII for his flat feet.

My grandmother of blessed memory told me to “take care of America” for her. In the Ukraine, she had not considered herself pious enough to make it in Isreal. She preferred the USA, having heard the streets were paved with gold and streets also somehow held an opportunity for upward mobility.

She never told me exactly what that meant, but as a resident doctor whose residency school had folded (with no neurosurgical residencies elsewhere in America) I made the military recruiting office into a system to get the US Army to pay my residency salary and get training in Canada.

A military stint as a general medical officer assigned to active duty — well, I didn’t have too much trouble convincing myself grandmother would be proud.

I ended up, through a variety of machinations, going to active duty in general psychiatry at a large Army base.

So indirectly, from my proud induction and joyous oath of allegiance to the US, I landed in a world where:

Many young men, before judges in America, were given a choice between military and prison, and continued to act as if criminal behaviors learned on the streets continued to be appropriate.

The medical command though this woman MD with a background in neurosciences should take care of ob-gyn and such because she was “a female.” (I got the necessary books out of the library and kept them in my office and did as ordered.)

The incidences of sexism were too numerous to recount.

And criminals? Although I have worked many prisons, I was ordered to evaluate my one-and-only axe murderer, he was seen while he was confined to an Army prison.

Not that he was cooperative. He answered no questions at all, laughing at the female officer who had been sent to interview him.

The techniques I derived to get any of my assignments done at all served me well later in my career.

The criminal patients, from the naive and young, to the masters, have stood with me.

The Huffington Post seems to have reported on a serious crime that happened in the military, and bore further investigation.

There are military press officers, and they release things to the public, but they don’t seem to release things like this.

America may want to know who is in the military, and why, and about horrible things that go on and are crimes against humanity and such.

Be afraid be very afraid.

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I’m not exactly drunk with power, being a psychiatrist. I fight with insurance companies on a daily basis, — begging for one generic brand the patient can take over one that makes them sick as a dog, and such.

I don’t pretend to have control over everything that happens inside my office. I have a basic idea of the territory that should be covered, but the reactions to what I bring up are rich and individual and creative and tell me the essence of my patients’ spirits. Read more on Unhappy? Go Outside And Play!…

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This looks to me like a pretty well-designed research study. It is what they call a “meta-analysis,” which means the authors put together studies other people have done and analyzed the lot of them, in that process which poetess Anne Sexton touched me a long time ago by calling “that awful rowing toward truth.”

Truth is hard to find and I basically believe in the scientific process that tries to get to it. Read more on This Bit About Girls And STEM…

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