Reflections on Psychiatry, Therapy, and Mental Health

There is nothing curious about a drug addict's attachment to their drugs. Addiction is a powerful problem that in order to be successfully dealt with requires commitment and treatment. On the other hand, patients in treatment who are stably benefiting from MAT- medication assisted treatment, are attached to their Suboxone in a manner that is qualitatively different from the addictive hold that drugs have on a person in the sways of addiction. We discovered this in our clini

Effectively providing therapy to patients with a history of trauma and PTSD depends on being guided by theoretical principals. I've recently noted a convergence of ideas that leads me to put a lot of credence in what follows. One idea comes from the emerging psychedelic movement; the idea that the mind has a natural tendency to self-heal. Other thoughts derive from the writings of Abraham Maslow, an author whose fame had led me to know of his 'hierarchy of needs,' but littl

As the season of giving came to a close this year I started to think a way in which I have not been giving to my patients over the years as much as I would have liked. To wit, all these years I have been formulating a theory of my patient's psychological functioning using sophisticated tools but have not shared these very same tools with my patients. Long ago one of my teachers told me that the counseling process is socratic, in effect, it is a process in which we teach our