When I started my healthcare career as a CNA in 1994, I had no idea I would one day be running my own psychiatric practice. But the experiences I accumulated over those 30 years — in nursing homes, correctional facilities, HIV clinics, crisis units, and psychosis wards — shaped a philosophy of care that I believe is genuinely different from what most patients have experienced.
The patients I've treated have faced every imaginable combination of challenges: poverty, trauma, medical illness, substance use, incarceration, social isolation, domestic violence, and grief. These experiences taught me that mental health cannot be separated from the rest of a person's life.
What Holistic Care Actually Means
- Investigating medical contributors before prescribing
- Taking social history as seriously as medical history
- Coordinating with primary care, therapists, and community supports
- Educating patients so they become partners in their own care
- Treating the person, not just the diagnosis
Key Takeaways
- Mental health is inseparable from physical and social wellbeing
- Diversity of clinical experience improves diagnostic accuracy
- Taking time to truly know a patient produces better outcomes
- Patients deserve to be partners in their care, not passive recipients