A Weekend of Social Psychiatric Problems

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

We continue to have these weekday daily columns post COVID-19 pandemic because there are still so many other social psychiatric challenges. This past weekend seemed especially full of them, at least from my view of the societal news, and therefore too much to cover in 1 column. Here, then, is the triptych I hope to cover in the rest of the columns this week, barring breaking social psychiatric news.

• The International Day of Peace. On Saturday, to coincide with this important annual day, the American Psychiatric Association Global Psychiatry Caucus and the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture put on an extremely successful 3.5-hour webinar on trauma, healing, and resilience in specific relationship to the war in the Mideast.
• Falling forward. Sunday was the beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere. We go from an equal time of atmospheric light and darkness at the same time that achingly beautiful fall foliage appears in various locations. Even if our sunlight dims, and with all our world mental health problems, can we fall forward to more insight and light for mental health?
• Psychiatry as a social determinant of mental health. Our psychiatric help in individual treatment can ripple out to others, but we also have the potential to help improve the well-being of society, especially important in this time of our contentious national election.

It also so serendipitously happens that Saturday would have been the 90th birthday of Leonard Cohen, the well-known poet, songwriter, and singer, who was both Jewish and a Zen Buddhist monk. His most famous song is “Hallelujah,” which has these lines that emphasize the potential power of words:

“There’s a blaze of light in every word

It doesn’t matter which you heard

The holy or the broken Hallelujah”

With our written and spoken words, let us blaze a path to heal the brokenness of the world, our suffering patients, and wounded-healer selves, just like the Japanese art of Kintsugi that beautifies broken vessels with reparative precious lacquer.

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 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.