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Vivek Murthy, during his tenure as surgeon general, has stressed the importance of mental health.
PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS
As President-Elect Trump makes his nominations, one of them is for a new surgeon general. Right now, that is Janette Nesheiwat.
This will be the second coming of Trump as our President. Our current surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, is finishing his second time in that role. He was surgeon general from 2014 to 2016 under President Obama, and 2021 to now under President Biden.
The surgeon general is the head of our country’s public health. In psychiatry, public mental health is emphasized in the American Psychiatric Association’s 2013 edition of The Principles of Medical Ethics. In Section 7, it says:
“A physician shall recognize a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health.”
I have long hoped for and written for a surgeon general to be a psychiatrist. After all, study after study reveals how common mental health concerns are in primary care practices.1 The overt and covert mental health concerns have been equal to that of respiratory and cardiovascular concerns, and even greater than that for infections, injuries, skin, digestive, or urological problems.
Although Dr Murthy is an internist by training, his major concerns have been psychiatric. Just look at them.
In his first tenure, he emphasized creating a culture of prevention. As part of that, he highlighted primary prevention of such mental health problems as e-cigarette addiction, the opioid epidemic, and produced the first even Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. He came out against conversion therapy for homosexuality and began to call out the health and mental health adverse repercussions of climate change. These social psychiatric concerns warranted him receiving the Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry in 2015, the same award I was honored to receive this year.
During his current tenure, his focus on mental health disturbances has even increased. He began with advising against incarcerating individuals for cannabis use. Then, with the COVID pandemic, he railed against social media misinformation.
As his tenure went on, he issued several mental health related advisories:
On firearm violence
On loneliness and isolation
On social media and youth mental health
On health worker well-being
On the mental health and well-being of parents
It can be noticed that all these mental health concerns are outside of our official DSM classification of mental disorders. Yet, they cause suffering and loss of function that need attention. As our Thanksgiving holiday comes to an end, to follow our ethical guidelines we must do our best to thank, honor, and act to continue Dr Murthy’s mental health legacy.
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.