My mission in life is to use my skills as a physician (M.D.) and psychotherapist to help people. As a psychiatrist, I serve individuals and families across a wide range of conditions and diagnoses. To read more about my professional credentials and to read my biographical sketch, click here. When I assembled this website five years ago, I didn't have a blog, and I didn't update very often. Recently I've decided to be a bit more spontaneous, adding thoughts and reflections here from time to time. This blog will reflect some of my continuing thinking, learning, and exploration.

Psychiatry as a medical specialty is a vast—and often uncharted—territory. The basic education of a psychiatrist is highly scientific and technical. The first two years of medical school are purely basic science: anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, and so on. The last two years include brief exposure to psychiatry and psychology, but most of the time is devoted to medicine, surgery, ob-gyn, and pediatrics. Internship and residency years in psychiatry involve patient care, but the psychiatrist’s true education begins after graduation. As the venerable Dr. Eugene Stead used to tell us at Duke, “Medical school is where you stay until you’re old enough to learn how to be a doctor.” The education of the good psychiatrist is a process that lasts a lifetime.

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Tags: psychiatry