I was a neurosurgeon in training in western Canada when I decided I need to buy myself a typewriter. I know that I reveal my age when I describe it as typing only on the piece of paper inserted into it.
I reveal my age even more clearly when I admit that I read the classifieds in print in the local provincial Canadian newspaper.
I drove to the modest apartment of a family somewhere in the wilds of Alberta, Canada. The typewriter was nearly new with a “standard” keyboard such as the one I had learned touch typing on at the Beaver Country Day School. Typing was supposed to be a skill a woman could “fall back on” in case high-falutin’ plans like specialized medical training did not work out. Read more on Salespeople, And Used Cars In Particular…
Filed under News, Society by on May 1st, 2014. Comment. 
It gets pretty evident pretty fast, to any psychiatrist who deals with the general public, that depression is daily bread. I mean, with current estimates at 19 million patients per year coming down with a depression — even with less than one half of them seeking treatment — it is a pretty sure bet that depressed people are common.
This in no way diminishes the anguish I have seen in patients having that disease. The anguish is real and dramatic.
I remember one of my earlier newspaper columns written for the Wichita Eagle-Beacon — the largest daily newspaper in Kansas — asking this simple question:
Why — when someone broke their leg — a salt-of-the-earth next-door neighbor would never fail to bake a pie. But when someone had a depression, nobody would bake anything.
The depressed person was basically treated like someone with a contagious disease. Read more on Why Some Get Depressed And Some Do Not…
Filed under depression, Mental Illness, Psychiatrists by on Jan 24th, 2014. Comment.