In Memoriam: Eulogies for Psychiatrists and Successful Work-Life Balance

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

In our time of epidemic burnout of physicians and psychiatrists, there has been an emphasis on personal wellness and work-life balance to offset some of the negative repercussions of burnout at work. Here are 2 exemplary models of doing so, with regret for their recent passing away.

Jerald “Jerry” Kay, MD

Somehow, I missed his passing away on October 27, 2024, at the age of 79. Perhaps it is because we were so close in age. Year by year, these eulogies feel more and more personal.

After majoring in religious studies in college, he went on to receive training as a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Cincinnati. After spending his early career there, Jerry became Chair at Wright State University School of Medicine for the next 25 years. When there, he received many outstanding faculty awards, as well as other national awards.

He was also a prolific writer and editor, including being the founding editor of the Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research at a time when psychiatrists role as psychotherapists was decreasing due to social pressure. He was known as a superb clinician. He also served on the Psychiatric Times editorial board.

For his own work/life balance, he was dedicated to his family and a talented photographer, painter, and Dixieland jazz musician. As one colleague noted: “I will always remember ‘The Captain’ and his office walls showing his wonderful photography skills.” All of us who knew him well will also have wonderful memories.

Joel Yager, BS, MD

Dr Yager died on December 22, 2024, at the age of 83. He was so renowned in the field of eating disorders that they published their own obituary of him.¹

Like, Dr Kay, he was a musician and comajored in music before his medical and psychiatric training. Later in life, he continued to be a jazz pianist who entertained family, friends, and colleagues. Here is how some others described him: his son said he embodied the values “to love, to learn, to serve, and to laugh”; a best friend called him “delusionally happy and unflaggingly cheerful.”

Soon he became a renowned residency training director at University of California, Los Angeles for 22 years, then medical Director of their Eating Disorders Clinic. Later he went on to the University of New Mexico and the University of Colorado, where he was also a beloved leader and colleague. No wonder he ended up with 5 Lifetime Achievement awards and many other laurels.

Over his last years fighting cancer, he continued to write and teach until the end, with his last paper on eating disorder with Australian colleagues published on the very day he died!²

Some of his other late writings also seemed to foreshadow his own dying in one way or another. In a 2018 article, he and his colleagues discussed the complexities and often contradictory values involved in suicide prevention for cognitively capable patients who wished to end their own lives.³ Not unexpectedly, that led to a collegial response advising against psychiatrists participating in competency assessment for physician-assisted deaths. The follow-up reply by Dr Yager and colleagues reemphasized the overriding importance of a therapeutic alliance with a patient’s plans to die, being careful to not reflexively intervene against that wish.⁴

Although it is rare for psychiatrists and others to write and talk about our own impending deaths, there is nothing to prevent that and even writing some of our own eulogy before we die. I have so far done my own eulogy 3 times. Such communications, like those of Dr Yager, bring in the voice of the deceased, which can be missing otherwise.

In a late essay, he described a good death⁵:

“ . . . the dying person is free from physical pain; dignified; lucid; graceful; attended by loved ones with amicability and love and with flowers, pictures, and music for the dying scene.”

His family confirmed that did happen with Joel’s own death. May it happen with ours.

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 presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. 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.

References

1. Gaudiani J, Touyz S. Obituary: Joel Yager, BS, MD (1941-2024). J Eat Disord. 2025;13(34).

2. Touyz S, Carney T, Yager J, et al. Finding the balance between respecting autonomy and life-saving anorexia nervosa care: an Australian perspective. Psychiatry Psychol Law. 2025;0(0):1-15.

3. Yager J, Ganzini L, Nguyen DH, Rapp EK. Working with decisionally capable patients who are determined to end their own lives. J Clin Psychiatry. 2018;79(4):17r11767.

4. Yager J, Ganzini L, Nguyen DH, Rapp EK. Dr Yager and colleagues reply. J Clin Psychiatry. 2018;79(6):18lrl2566a.

5. Yager J. And then he died. JAMA. 2023;329(14):1151-1152.