Addressing our Social Psychiatric Problems
What is the impact of current political events on the public's mental health?
This video series is taking a short break while Dr Moffic travels. For now, enjoy the rerun of this video with updated commentary.
In being inspired by Labor Day 2024, we will go all the way back to our first weekly video, as it’s been a Labor of Love to do these, probably approaching almost 150, for almost 3 years since their beginning on October 7, 2020. At that time, the obvious need was to address the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unfortunately, we have needed to continue these weekly videos even after the pandemic ended a year ago, and not primarily because less severe COVID variant infections continue. For example, just take last October 7, 2023, almost a year ago, which is the date of the Hamas invasion of Israel and the ensuing war with all the mutual deaths, injuries, and posttraumatic stress disorder. As it has turned out, there are many other social psychiatric problems that we still need to address, including what I have come to call the social psychopathologies. In the case of the Mideast War, that includes anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. We have a lot of social psychiatric work to do!
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.
