Skip to content
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Book
  • Careers
  • Podcast
  • Recommended
  • Speaking
  • All
  • Physician
  • Practice
  • Policy
  • Finance
  • Conditions
  • .edu
  • Patient
  • Meds
  • Tech
  • Social
  • Video
    • All
    • Physician
    • Practice
    • Policy
    • Finance
    • Conditions
    • .edu
    • Patient
    • Meds
    • Tech
    • Social
    • Video
    • About
    • Contact
    • Contribute
    • Book
    • Careers
    • Podcast
    • Recommended
    • Speaking

Why this doctor became a psychiatrist

Margaret Smith Chisolm, MD
Physician
March 19, 2020
Share
Tweet
Share

Serving others

My career path has been non-traditional, but my mission and values as a psychiatrist emerge from the traditions of medicine and religion. Although I studied visual arts in college, I was drawn to the challenge and meaning of a career serving others.

Understanding patients

During residency at Hopkins, I was trained in a psychiatry that recognizes that similar distressful mental symptoms can emerge from several different sources and that psychiatric disorders fall into distinct families. This approach to psychiatry is aimed less at addressing diagnoses or classification and more on understanding patients better and making treatment more whole. It also removes a great deal of mystery from the discipline, for patients and physicians.

Supporting the broader community

After residency, while raising my family, I used this visionary clinical approach to treat students at the Homewood campus and individuals from the broader community in my private practice. Throughout this time, I was an active member of the part-time faculty at Hopkins and continued to teach Hopkins psychiatry residents. As my family’s needs waned, I returned to academics, where I now enjoy an expanded role combining clinical care, teaching, and scholarship–including co-authoring one book for clinicians, Systematic Psychiatric Evaluation: A Step-by-Step Guide to Applying The Perspectives of Psychiatry, and working on a new book for patients and their families on how one can flourish despite psychiatric illness.

Demystifying psychiatry 

Demystifying psychiatry for patients has been the heart of my professional activity for over 25 years. My clinical experience, shared by other psychiatrists trained in this method, has shown patients appreciate learning about the group of conditions to which their problem belongs.

For patients, this dispels much of the mystery surrounding their disorder and helps them forge the therapeutic relationship needed for a shared effort to overcome their condition. This approach is not foreign to the rest of medicine, which has demonstrated that medical patients gain from learning what type of illness–infectious, metabolic, etc., explains their symptoms.

Practicing and teaching psychotherapy

Another important aspect of my mission to demystify psychiatry centers around the practice and teaching of psychotherapy. Although the term psychotherapy evokes the idea of an incisive intervention, psychotherapy is fundamentally different from any procedure found in medicine or surgery aimed at curing a disrupted body. Psychotherapy does not aim to cure the body or even the brain– it aims to persuade a person in distress to think and behave differently. It is a method, common in some form to all cultures, which addresses human mental problems.

One of my mentors, the late Dr. Jerome Frank, was a psychiatrist and an esteemed scientific investigator of psychotherapy. By studying therapies that succeeded and failed, he was able to define several characteristics common to all successful therapies. In addition, he found that patients seek psychotherapy for reassurance, hope, and support, much as they did in the past from the clergy. Frank concluded, in his book of the same title, that psychotherapy–at its core–is simply Persuasion and Healing. The practice and teaching of this powerful and timeless treatment, often used in conjunction with newer pharmacologic therapies, is a central part of my mission as a psychiatrist.

As a member of the full-time faculty, I have had the opportunity to extend this passion for teaching the art of psychotherapy to a greater and more diverse group of psychiatry trainees, and via the casebook will be able to reach an even broader audience of caregivers. My ultimate aim is to write a book demystifying psychiatry and psychotherapy for patients and the general public.

A mission of hope

Psychiatry rests on the borders of medicine, religion, narrative, and philosophy. In its existential aspects, psychotherapy calls for the imagination of alternative possibilities. This mission of hope has wide applicability to all patients seeking relief from suffering. We live in a time when managed care bureaucracy and technologic innovation have the potential to overshadow the personal dimension of medicine. It is essential to convey to patients, caregivers, and the larger society, the crucial role psychiatry and psychotherapy has to play in health care.

Margaret Smith Chisolm is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

ADVERTISEMENT

Prev

Medical community recommendations for a better COVID-19 response

March 19, 2020 Kevin 0
…
Next

On the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic

March 19, 2020 Kevin 0
…

Tagged as: Psychiatry

Post navigation

< Previous Post
Medical community recommendations for a better COVID-19 response
Next Post >
On the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

  • Doctor, how are you, really?

    Deborah Courtney
  • Osler and the doctor-patient relationship

    Leonard Wang
  • Finding a new doctor is like dating

    R. Lynn Barnett
  • Be a human first and a doctor second

    Sarah Murad
  • Becoming a doctor is the epitome of delayed gratification

    Natasha Abadilla
  • International medical graduates ease the U.S. doctor shortage

    G. Richard Olds, MD

More in Physician

  • Removing vaccine advisers could jeopardize lives

    J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, MD
  • Why would any physician believe that the practice of medicine will become less abusive for them in the future?

    Curtis G. Graham, MD
  • The hidden war on doctors: Understanding administrative violence

    Maryna Mammoliti, MD
  • How doctors can stop frivolous lawsuits before they start

    Howard Smith, MD
  • How the 10th Apple Effect is stealing your joy in medicine

    Neil Baum, MD
  • When a doctor becomes the narrator of a patient’s final chapter

    Ryan McCarthy, MD
  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • Why tracking cognitive load could save doctors and patients

      Hiba Fatima Hamid | Education
    • What the world must learn from the life and death of Hind Rajab

      Saba Qaiser, RN | Conditions
    • How medical culture hides burnout in plain sight

      Marco Benítez | Conditions
    • Why flashy AI tools won’t fix health care without real infrastructure

      David Carmouche, MD | Tech
    • How the 10th Apple Effect is stealing your joy in medicine

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
    • Why Medicaid cuts should alarm every doctor

      Ilan Shapiro, MD | Policy
  • Past 6 Months

    • Why tracking cognitive load could save doctors and patients

      Hiba Fatima Hamid | Education
    • Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

      Joshua Baker and James Jackson, PsyD | Conditions
    • The silent toll of ICE raids on U.S. patient care

      Carlin Lockwood | Policy
    • The broken health care system doesn’t have to break you

      Jessie Mahoney, MD | Physician
    • How dismantling DEI endangers the future of medical care

      Shashank Madhu and Christian Tallo | Education
    • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
  • Recent Posts

    • When the diagnosis is personal: What my mother’s Alzheimer’s taught me about healing

      Pearl Jones, MD | Conditions
    • What led me from nurse practitioner to medical school

      Sarah White, APRN | Education
    • Why local cardiac CT scans could save your life

      Benjamin Cohen, MD | Conditions
    • Reassessing the impact of CDC’s opioid guidelines on chronic pain care [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Key strategies for smooth EHR transitions in health care

      Sandra Johnson | Tech
    • How proposed NIH budget cuts could derail Alzheimer’s research

      Tamer Hage, Tejas Sekhar, and Swapna Vaja | Conditions

Subscribe to KevinMD and never miss a story!

Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.


Find jobs at
Careers by KevinMD.com

Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now.

Learn more

Leave a Comment

Founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, KevinMD.com is the web’s leading platform where physicians, advanced practitioners, nurses, medical students, and patients share their insight and tell their stories.

Social

  • Like on Facebook
  • Follow on Twitter
  • Connect on Linkedin
  • Subscribe on Youtube
  • Instagram

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

  • Most Popular

  • Past Week

    • Why tracking cognitive load could save doctors and patients

      Hiba Fatima Hamid | Education
    • What the world must learn from the life and death of Hind Rajab

      Saba Qaiser, RN | Conditions
    • How medical culture hides burnout in plain sight

      Marco Benítez | Conditions
    • Why flashy AI tools won’t fix health care without real infrastructure

      David Carmouche, MD | Tech
    • How the 10th Apple Effect is stealing your joy in medicine

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
    • Why Medicaid cuts should alarm every doctor

      Ilan Shapiro, MD | Policy
  • Past 6 Months

    • Why tracking cognitive load could save doctors and patients

      Hiba Fatima Hamid | Education
    • Make cognitive testing as routine as a blood pressure check

      Joshua Baker and James Jackson, PsyD | Conditions
    • The silent toll of ICE raids on U.S. patient care

      Carlin Lockwood | Policy
    • The broken health care system doesn’t have to break you

      Jessie Mahoney, MD | Physician
    • How dismantling DEI endangers the future of medical care

      Shashank Madhu and Christian Tallo | Education
    • How scales of justice saved a doctor-patient relationship

      Neil Baum, MD | Physician
  • Recent Posts

    • When the diagnosis is personal: What my mother’s Alzheimer’s taught me about healing

      Pearl Jones, MD | Conditions
    • What led me from nurse practitioner to medical school

      Sarah White, APRN | Education
    • Why local cardiac CT scans could save your life

      Benjamin Cohen, MD | Conditions
    • Reassessing the impact of CDC’s opioid guidelines on chronic pain care [PODCAST]

      The Podcast by KevinMD | Podcast
    • Key strategies for smooth EHR transitions in health care

      Sandra Johnson | Tech
    • How proposed NIH budget cuts could derail Alzheimer’s research

      Tamer Hage, Tejas Sekhar, and Swapna Vaja | Conditions

MedPage Today Professional

An Everyday Health Property Medpage Today
  • Terms of Use | Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy
  • DMCA Policy
All Content © KevinMD, LLC
Site by Outthink Group

Leave a Comment

Comments are moderated before they are published. Please read the comment policy.

Loading Comments...