Devina Maya Wadhwa is a psychiatrist.
As a psychiatrist, I often find myself confronting not only the symptoms of mental illness but also the deep scars left by stigma. Even in 2025, despite advances in neuroscience and a growing cultural focus on mental health, stigma remains one of the greatest barriers to healing. It manifests in silence, shame, and misunderstanding, and it affects patients, families, and even those of us within the psychiatric profession. Addressing stigma …
It is a routine Saturday morning—I am sitting in my office, looking at the snowflakes dropping outside my window. As I sip on my cup of Earl Grey tea preparing my psyche for a busy day of managing an on-call shift on an acute care psychiatry floor, I am suddenly washed over by grief. A very similar Saturday a year ago, I was saying goodbye to my father as he …
Would you ever consider a routine day at the office as how many people are going to abuse you?
As a psychiatrist who works primarily in an acute care setting, I look after patients that enter the emergency room with complex mental health and social difficulties. I have been doing this work for close to a decade now. I often get asked why I choose to continue the work, and the …
I don’t know when the word burnout came into my vocabulary, but I feel that we use it constantly in our health care world today. I always thought I was immune to this concept of burnout. My self-talk was that I was strong and nothing would ever happen to me. As a psychiatrist and a yoga practitioner, I thought I was better equipped to “handle my feelings” and be in …
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