Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes
“The unparalleled and pervasive nature of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic has touched all of us in some way. There is limited, albeit growing, research on the mental health effects of disasters. A recent review article pointed out the potentially negative consequences of prolonged quarantine, while other research from Wuhan, China, highlighted the impact of COVID-19, particularly amongst healthcare personnel. Psychiatrists and mental health professionals will play a critical role in the aftermath of the pandemic, but this requires a shift in perception of who a psychiatrist is and what they have to offer.”
Chinenye Onyemaechi is a psychiatrist.
She shares her story and discusses the KevinMD article that she co-wrote, “Redefining the role of psychiatrists in the time of COVID-19.”
Did you enjoy today’s episode?
Please click here to leave a review for The Podcast by KevinMD. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out!
Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode to anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration.
Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.
Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show we have Chinenye Onyemaechi. She’s a psychiatrist, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Redefining the role of psychiatrists in the time of COVID-19.” Chinenye, welcome to the show.
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Thank you so much for having me.
Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a bit, but first off, tell me your story and your journey to where you are today.
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Yes. So like you said, I’m a board-certified psychiatrist. I trained at the University of Maryland Medical Center/Sheppard Pratt, where I did my adult training, and I also did an extra year of fellowship training in forensic psychiatry. I’m from Maryland, but from there I decided to take the leap and go into locum tenens work. So I’m actually a full-time locum tenens psychiatrist. I’ve worked in four states and am licensed in six. I’m actually working on the seventh one, and right now I’m in Southwest Michigan.
Real physician voices, twice a week
Free, and one click to unsubscribe.
Kevin Pho: And how has the pandemic affected you and your locum tenens practice?
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Yes, that’s a great question. It’s definitely affected the number of locum opportunities available. I was fortunate in that I already had planned to be in my current assignment for some time. But in psychiatry, unlike other medical units, I work as an inpatient psychiatrist, so our patients don’t tend to stay in their rooms. They’re walking on the unit, going to groups, doing activities. So we had to reduce our census to allow people to have private rooms, so it would be safe.
Kevin Pho: Sure. And what kind of behavioral health issues have you been seeing as a result of the pandemic?
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Yes, I’ve been seeing people who have had recurrent episodes of their mental illness. So mania, for instance, a hallmark of bipolar disorder: People are getting stressed, losing sleep, and that leads to a manic episode or psychotic episode. I’m seeing more people coming in with depressive symptoms and anxiety from quarantine, staying home. They’ve lost a lot of the structures that have held them in place, that have been a coping mechanism, like work or just leaving the house, going out to eat. So it’s really been affecting a lot of people.
Kevin Pho: And that segues nicely into the article that you wrote for KevinMD, “Redefining the role of psychiatrists in the time of COVID-19.” Now, can you tell me the main thrust of that article and why you decided to write it?
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Yes. So my expertise is actually in emergency and crisis psychiatry. So I could recognize just how intense and pervasive the pandemic was. I wrote this, I believe, in April, so back in March I could see that this was going to have a huge impact, and even in the mental health world, we’re anticipating a mental health tsunami to come out of this. So I recognized, or at least I believe, psychiatrists are well positioned to be helpful to not just the medical community but society as a whole, as far as how to make sense of what’s going on. So that’s where this article came from.
Kevin Pho: So what kind of issues do you see going forward from a behavioral health standpoint?
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Sure. So in any disaster, the research has shown that depression and post-traumatic stress disorder are the two major manifestations that happen psychologically after a crisis. Just broadly speaking, anxiety is the most common mental health disorder, and so we’re already seeing that: a lot of people feeling anxious, fearful, whether they’re afraid of just getting contaminated, catching the virus, with the restrictions, not really understanding what’s going on. Some of the information we’ve gotten is so inconsistent. So those are what we’ll largely see: a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety, a lot of trauma responses.
Kevin Pho: Now, from a behavioral health standpoint, what kind of tips can you give to both primary care doctors like myself and in an acute emergency setting?
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Yes, so that’s a great question. I would say, for one, just knowing the common mental health or behavioral health problems that come from a crisis. So look out in your patients for depression. Screen for that. Screen for anxiety. You can let patients know that there are certain tools available online. Google recently partnered with the National Alliance for Mental Illness, or NAMI, to have an anxiety screen on Google. So if your patients Google “anxiety,” they can see the GAD-7 screen pop up, they can do that assessment at home, and they can show those results, and you can talk about it.
Also recognize that trauma reactions are actually normal. They’re not necessarily the same as having post-traumatic stress disorder. So feeling fearful, having difficulty sleeping, these are things in the here and now that you can help your patients with: helping them with sleep if they need a sleep aid temporarily, making sure they have access to you if they need a referral to a mental health clinician, knowing that a lot of mental health providers are seeing patients through telemedicine, so that the resource is available.
I’ve just noticed in my practice a lot of people don’t recognize that what’s going on is actually normal, and they get fearful and think it’s pathological, and they’re afraid to get help. So being that normalizing, calming entity to reassure them is a great help.
Kevin Pho: Now, is there something that you’ve learned during the pandemic? In other words, this is something that you know now that you wish you knew back before the pandemic started.
Chinenye Onyemaechi: I think, just for myself personally, I’ve just become more grateful, grateful for where I’ve come, where I’ve been in life, and that I’ve developed this training that I can give to other people. I think that’s the best thing, really, because the pandemic came upon us so suddenly. Our lives have changed. We have to come up with a new normal. Our way of seeing the world has been shattered. And so while it’s sort of like a moment where things are crumbling, I do see there’s a lot of growth moving forward from this.
Kevin Pho: Now, you’re a locum tenens psychiatrist, and that gives you a little bit of a different perspective in terms of the field as a whole. Now, we’re looking at, what you said, a tsunami of behavioral health issues leading to the pandemic. Is the mental health workforce up to that tsunami of cases going forward?
Chinenye Onyemaechi: You mean as just having the personnel ready?
Kevin Pho: Yeah.
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Already, psychiatrists are one of the most in-demand specialists in medicine. More are aging out, and there are not as many of us in areas of need. So we’re going to have to rely more on primary care providers to be able to screen, on telemedicine and telepsychiatry to improve access, and also on mental health literacy education, something I’m personally interested in, so that the public knows what to be looking for. I think part of it is just access and people not realizing what is a psychiatric emergency or what is a behavioral health problem that needs to be addressed.
Kevin Pho: Sure. Now let’s take a step back. I was wondering if you could share with the audience something that you’ve been curious about or something that you’ve been passionate about over the last few months.
Chinenye Onyemaechi: I’ve been very passionate about mental health literacy. I’ve learned that many people don’t know what mental illness looks like, or they don’t recognize that they’re going through trauma, trauma reactions. They think it’s not anything, it’s normal in the sense that everybody, you know, it’s something to dismiss, that’s not something to be addressed.
So I am trying to work on, like my article, putting out more information, showing that psychiatrists are available, highlighting things that are normal experiences, what are abnormal, or things that need a point of intervention. So that’s something I’ve been really passionate about, just teaching more about mental health. It’s already starting to come more to the surface, more into public conversation, but I think having more expertise available is going to be helpful.
Kevin Pho: Well, thank you so much for sharing your time, wisdom, and insight. And my final question to you is, what’s your take-home message for the KevinMD audience?
Chinenye Onyemaechi: My take-home message is to take care, take care of yourself. Develop some self-care practices. The biggest thing I can say is: Think about your medical training or the hardest experiences of your life. What did you do to cope then? You bring those tools back. They will help you now.
Kevin Pho: Wonderful. And thank you so much for sharing your advice and your story, and thank you for being on the show.
Chinenye Onyemaechi: Thank you.
Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes
