“I realized that training in psychiatry would give me the opportunity to understand suicide far better, and hopefully allow me to make a difference at an earlier stage. My exposure to psychiatry in medical school was clearly not enough. I was ill-equipped to fully grasp when individuals begin to have thoughts of suicide and when those thoughts progress into planning or researching methods – and then acting on them. As I thought back to the numbers of dead-on-arrival patients that I attended to in Detroit – dead by overdoses, self-inflicted gunshot wounds or stabbings, electrocution, asphyxia, drowning or jumping from tall buildings – I knew that I wanted to do more than pronounce people and fill out death certificates. Becoming a psychiatrist could help me save some of these despairing souls.”
Michael F. Myers is a psychiatrist and author of Becoming a Doctors’ Doctor: A Memoir.
He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, “Training in psychiatry would give me the opportunity to understand suicide far better.”
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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.
