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…
Filed under Doctors, medicine, News, Psychiatrists, Psychology by on Feb 24th, 2020. Comment. 
Primary care doctors as well as psychiatrists give out antidepressants more than other kinds of medicine.
At the time I started training in psychiatry, we memorized the antidepressant side effects for early chemical classes derived from antituberculosis drugs and became overjoyed when the SSRIs came out. Actually something safe and effective and pretty “clean” of risks and side effects and interactions! First Prozac, which was FDA approved a day I was getting off call and grabbing a few hours of shuteye to be awakened by the morning news proclaiming that the new “safe” antidepressant would be a “wonderful advancement for psychiatry.” Read more on …
Filed under Alternative Medicine, depression, Diagnosis, FDA, medicine by on Jan 18th, 2018. Comment.
While I was training in psychiatry 30 years ago, the field was changing around me. The older psychoanalysts were forced — reluctantly — to add prescription of psychotropics to their practices or else patients would never make it to their door. Of course, they had little to no training in pharmacology and less interest so they didn’t usually know what they were doing. While I was ascending in the ranks of psychiatric trainees, the best and the brightest of us were ushered into special training in pharmacology research. I was (and probably still am) about as idealist and apolitical an up-and-coming psychiatrist that anyone could have invented. Read more on The Politics of Drug Development…
Filed under politics, prescription drugs, Psychiatrists, Uncategorized by on May 20th, 2017. Comment.