I asked myself as a twelve-year-old boy. The question determined my life trajectory.
In the summer of 1959, my brother and I attended a Catholic boys camp outside of our hometown of Milwaukee, as we had in previous summers. What was different that year was a long-planned and long-anticipated family summer vacation. We had never taken a family vacation before - and, as it turned out, we never would.
As our father picked us up from camp in the family '57 Ford station wagon, he spoke to my brother and me, as he struggled to hold back tears. He told us that we were not to have a family vacation. My mother was in a psychiatric hospital.
I was stunned. I remember asking myself, "What is happening?' I was the oldest in my sibship of four, and I had no idea that my mother was suffering from a psychotic depression.
My siblings and I visited our mother about a dozen times during eight months of hospitalization. I recall two very different hospitals. The first was in a beautiful setting which my father could afford for two months. The second was in an austere turn-of- the century building. Electroconvulsive therapy, insulin-coma therapy and cold showers were the treatments. These actually worked.
My mother never struggled with depression again. As she could, while raising a young family, she sublimated through her oil painting. She lived to be eighty-four.
At the wake and funeral, ten of her oils were displayed. A lovely women attended - a former Catholic nun who eventually married and had her own family. She had taught music to my siblings and me while we attended grade school,
She said to me that evening, "Tony, you were talking about being a psychiatrist when you were thirteen years old."
When I visited my mother as a twelve-year-old boy, her condition and treatments were mysteries to me. I wish for so much more for the patients and families in my care. Fortunately, so much more is possible. Psychiatric research is international. Access to information is instantaneous through books, videos, podcasts and artificial intelligence.
I encourage learning through every available avenue. I gave careful thought to my website's name, "the learning psychiatrist". I hope to be him for my patients and their families.
I intend to learn from and with all patients and families and to do my best to educate. I encourage all questions and reflections. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn together and to address the question," What is happening?'
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