Views Rules

The Views Rules.

I am excited about having this website. As a psychiatrist, I worry about being too personal on it, but I always thought one of the fun things about a website would be to talk about whatever I wanted. Some of the older thinking in psychiatry has been that the psychiatrist should be a “blank screen” who does not share anything about him or herself, including feelings. I feel that psychiatrists can and should share things about themselves.

One example of this is after I ruptured my Achilles Tendon and had surgery. My clients generally wanted to know how I was doing and I shared (briefly) with them my experiences and feelings with it. I discussed that despite being optimistic and motivated to recover, I was also depressed and devastated at times. It seemed that the relationships only improved with the understanding that I also have strong emotions; good and bad, and that I also have troubling experiences and events in my life. As human beings we can’t get away from that. One of our gifts is that we have an ability to communicate these things with each other and support each other when needed. I will therefore be fairly open.

One thing that I know for sure about this site is that it will never contain any information about any of my clients. I may talk about past experiences in a generalized way, but I will not include any information that could be used to identify anybody.

Another goal of this site will be to educate people. I plan to write about mechanisms for various medications and why they work, along with any other issues related to psychiatry. I think that education is so empowering to people and is crucial in recovery and staying recovered.

However, the content cannot always be serious like some stodgy Freudian wannabe with pipe in mouth, bow‐tie perfectly knotted, goatee trimmed, donned in an elbow‐patched blazer. (I own neither a pipe, bow tie nor elbow‐patched blazer; I also am clean‐shaven and intend to stay that way). My point is that when there is something that I find funny and worth writing about, I fully plan on doing so. Hopefully it will actually be funny when intended.

I look forward to this and I think that putting my thoughts in writing, be they about practicing psychiatry, educating people or anything else, will help me become a better psychiatrist.