SPOTLIGHT -
July 12th 2024
"...the beauty still intoxicating, the spirit of the research like a child swimming for the first time in the sea, awed..."
July 11th 2024
"By now I’ve lost track of time with this boy who reminds me of myself when I imagined becoming a doctor..."
July 5th 2024
"Remember? Remember wanting to play every minute, as if that was why we were born?"
June 28th 2024
"How free is our will if our fate is decided by our melanin. What is the meaning of Black lives when so many people don’t think we matter?"
June 21st 2024
"Of all the questions you might want to ask about angels, the only one you ever hear is how many can dance on the head of a pin..."
The Stethoscope
Laennec was running late when he saw children send sounds through a wooden beam...
VIP Referral
When a health system honcho asks me to see his thirty-year-old son “for a little anxiety” I can only agree. He arrives with a girlfriend, the couple dressed like characters from an Armani ad...
Psychiatry Comic: Consumer Delusion
"If only I had this, I would feel that."
Winter Rorschach Test
A penguin? An igloo? A big snowflake? Weigh in on this Rorschach-type image, just for fun.
The Fisherman
Tears track his leathered face like seawater spilled from a sinking hull...
Psychiatry Comic: Winter Medications
Post-holiday hangover? Here are some comical treatments to beat the winter blues.
Still Practicing
My penmanship sucks. So does my typing. I’ve been this way since seventh grade...
A Psychiatrist’s Diet
Looking out at a flat gray sea, I try to imagine the chasms in the ocean’s floor where lava laced with strontium pours...
We Journey On
A poem written by a psychiatrist: "A faith in human kindness lost, abandonment with lasting cost."
Caring for the Patient
I want my patients to believe I consider Peabody’s advice before I see them, that I recognize our shared humanity...
Up in Smoke
He smoked trabucos, mild miniatures produced by the Austrian monopoly, but preferred Don Pedros and Reina Cubanos...
Psychiatry Comic: Be Negative
The lab results came back and here's what the doctor found.
Looking Like a God
The trouble with looking like a God becomes clear after we learn to wear our mask of omnipotence, pretending to know the answers to questions...
Psychiatry Comic: Beach Reading
These books almost write themselves.
A Lobsterman Looks at the Sea
His new hip healed in, we’re working on a bluff, talking doctors and health care reform as we shove a new propane tank into place...
The Death of an Addict
As clinicians, we can only imagine what happens when patients terminate treatment. Thoughts from an addiction psychiatry fellow.
A Curious Kind of Love
Sometimes when proposing a treatment plan, I flash to an image of my patient seated beside me on this orchard bench watching orioles court in May’s sharp sunlight...
Psychiatry Comic: Identity Crisis
"So how did you feel when you found out you weren't a . . .?"
Psychiatry Comic: Germaphobia
Some novel ideas for the therapy clinic.
Psychiatry Comic: SSRI Dogs
Which one is Selective Serotonin and which is Reuptake Inhibitor? Some Friday fun.
Lazy Birder
Dawn is at five, but I sleep past nine, not caring if I miss a few warblers flying home for summer...
Psychiatry Comic: APA Rockstar
A bit of conference levity as we cover serious issues.
Spring Rorschach Test
Keeping the season in mind, what is your first impression of this image?
Hit by a Bus
That’s how he’d like to go, he tells me, not by this slow seeding of liver and spine, not with all the tears and long good-byes.
Sleeping Daughter
The Big Bad Wolf and Wicked Witch liked to creak the stairs by her bedroom door and wake her from dreams calling, “Daddy!”
Steel Against Steel
On the cracked macadam court in the shadow of The Castle on the Hill, below fake gun turrets built with bricks...
Talk Radio, 2 am
I’m driving home from the ER, not ready for sleep, eaten up by memories of my mistakes...
This Year in Rorschach: 2014
Featuring this year in Rorschach tests at Psychiatric Times.
Motorcycle Racer
We’ve been meeting since his PSA spiked and he decided on surgery. Radiation finished, nerves nicked by the robot...
Extinction
After a managed care company calls me to be “a prescriber,” I recall The Book of Dinosaurs my grandfather gave me the day I turned seven.