Psychiatry

Avicenna’s influence on modern medicine: a physician’s reflection

Physician

March 29, 2026

In the modern-day world, a physician’s daily routine is often a whirlwind of clinical data, digital notifications, and the latest diagnostic protocols. Yet, in the quiet moments between patients, I find myself returning to the teachings of a man who lived over a millennium ago: Ibn Sina, known to history as Avicenna.

While we often view the history of medicine as a linear climb from “darkness” to “enlightenment,” the Canon of …

The risks of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising and Big Pharma

Ronald L. Lindsay, MD

Meds

March 29, 2026

In 2002, prescribing risperidone meant fighting through layers of resistance. I had to argue with formulary doctors, armed with a special copy of the New England Journal of Medicine article where my own name was highlighted, just to gain permission. That was the level of scrutiny these drugs once demanded. The article itself was not obscure, it was a landmark trial demonstrating risperidone’s efficacy in children with autism spectrum disorders.

Yet …

Occupational therapy in addiction recovery: Making daily life livable

Irving Gold

Conditions

March 28, 2026

Jonathan first met the health system on the floor of an emergency room.

He had drunk himself into a crisis, and the team did what they are trained to do: stabilize, monitor, and discharge. He got a lecture. He got a referral. He was given an AA meeting list. Then he got on with the long business of suffering.

For years, Jonathan bounced between moments of crisis and well-intentioned medical appointments that …

Why physician burnout is actually a loss of professional identity

Timothy Lesaca, MD

Physician

March 28, 2026

Most accounts of physician burnout begin with a familiar list: too many hours, too many clicks, too many patients, and not enough time. The diagnosis follows easily. Doctors are exhausted. Something inside them has been used up. Burned out. That explanation has the advantage of being familiar. It also has the potential to be incomplete. There is another way to understand what is happening, one that comes from an unlikely …

Why physicians must reclaim their right to pause [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 27, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Integrative pediatrician Mary Wilde discusses the article “The pause medicine never taught us to take.” Mary discusses how medical training conditions clinicians to fear rest and prioritize a treadmill of servitude over …

The hidden health crisis of teenage online gambling

Kayvan Haddadan, MD

Conditions

March 27, 2026

As a physician who treats people with chronic pain, stress-related illnesses, and the lasting physical effects of emotional trauma, I have begun seeing a deeply troubling pattern in my exam room. Parents arrive exhausted, anxious, and physically unwell. Their symptoms rarely come from one obvious injury or disease. Instead, they stem from an ongoing emotional battle taking place right inside their own homes: their teenager’s struggle with online gambling addiction. …

How to spot artificial intelligence recruiters who target candidates from LinkedIn

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Physician

March 26, 2026

The rise of artificial intelligence-generated profiles means that by 2028, globally, one in four job candidates will be fake, according to research and advisory firm Gartner. Once hired, an impostor can install malware to demand a ransom from a company, steal its customer data, trade secrets, or funds. That is one side of the coin. Here is the other: the fake recruiter. I have been receiving emails from recruiters …

Compassion fatigue in medicine: Why the brain numbs trauma

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Physician

March 22, 2026

In the sterile quiet of an exam room, a physician faces a patient recounting a history of profound trauma. To a layperson, the story is bone-chilling. To the seasoned clinician, it can occasionally and guiltily feel like data. We call it burnout or compassion fatigue, but biologically, it is something more fundamental. The human brain has a finite capacity for empathy.

Our neural circuitry evolved for small tribes, not for a …

The psychology of hero worship: When admiration overrides reason

Rao M. Uppu, PhD

Conditions

March 20, 2026

Emotional contagion and crowd psychology are powerful forces that shape human behavior in large gatherings. In India, where collective identity and reverence for public figures often run deep, emotional responses within crowds may take on added intensity. This reflection draws on an incident from Tamil Nadu to illustrate how collective emotion can sometimes override proportion and common sense, with implications for community safety and well-being.

This may sound amusing today, but …

The 3 levels of psychiatric treatment: biological, psychosocial, moral

Mark D. Kilgus, MD, PhD and Nicolas Badre, MD

Conditions

March 19, 2026

One can consider that psychiatric treatment occurs on three levels: biological, then psychosocial, and then moral-existential. First, if needed, the psychiatrist prescribes medication to rectify biological abnormalities. Second, the therapist facilitates psychotherapy to address psychosocial problems. Third, the therapist uses the clinician-patient …

Moving beyond the false binary of medicine as a calling

Christie Mulholland, MD

Physician

March 19, 2026

There is a resident doctor on TikTok named Julia who is also a raver. She posts about her training, and her weekends, dancing, festivals, après ski, living a full and visibly joyful life outside the hospital. The comments on her videos are glowing. “I would love to have a doctor like you.” “You seem like a real person.” A lot of patients are not looking for a self-sacrificing doctor who …

Why immersive travel may be a powerful tool for behavior change

Stacey Funt, MD

Physician

March 18, 2026

In lifestyle medicine, we know the script: eat better, move more, manage stress, sleep well, connect with others. Many of us know what to do. But knowledge alone does not create transformation. What does? Identity. That quiet internal voice that tells us who we are and what we are capable of. Research by Daphna Oyserman and colleagues shows that identity drives behavior …

ADHD in physicians: Why medical training punishes neurodiversity

Samantha Leite, MD

Conditions

March 18, 2026

I was halfway through my first year of OB-GYN residency when I learned that my brain had been working against me my entire life. By then, I had passed licensing exams, matched into a surgical specialty, and learned how to function convincingly while exhausted. What I had not learned, and what medicine never taught me, was how to recognize when “high functioning” was actually quiet suffering. And that distinction matters, …

The Schism of Time: Bridging the generational gap in the workplace

Seleipiri Akobo, MD, MPH, MBA

Physician

March 17, 2026

In our modern professional landscape, we are witnessing a phenomenon I call the Schism of Time. It is not just a gap in age; it is a fundamental difference in how we perceive value, and “spend” the hours of our lives.

As technology accelerates, the cadence of our work shifts. We see a friction between the “Deep Time” often championed by seasoned leaders, rooted in legacy, patience, and incremental growth, and …

Why modern medicine feels more like a bureaucracy than a profession

Jeffrey Junig, MD, PhD

Physician

March 17, 2026

I walked through a beautiful hallway the other day, the kind hospitals and clinics seem to favor now, polished floors, warm lighting, and old oak paneling on the walls. It looked less like a medical building and more like the lobby of a boutique hotel. At the end of the hallway sat a receptionist who was having a bad day. Or maybe she was just doing her job. She glanced …

Why perfectionism in medicine leads to moral injury

Farid Sabet-Sharghi, MD

Conditions

March 16, 2026

In the hallowed halls of medical school, we are often screened for traits that make the “ideal doctor”: high empathy, meticulous perfectionism, and a profound sense of duty. We are the fixers, the ones who find deep meaning in the intersubjective space between healer and patient. Yet, there is a shadow side to this personality architecture that no one talks about, an underlying proclivity toward rejection sensitivity.

The very traits that …

Wellness requires safe spaces outside the medical system [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 14, 2026

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Pediatrician and certified coach Jessie Mahoney discusses her article “Why physician wellness programs must evolve beyond institutions.” Jessie reflects on her seventeen years leading in-house wellness initiatives and argues that while institutional …

Workplace boundaries: How to stop answering e-mails at 5 p.m.

Yekaterina Angelova, MD

Physician

March 14, 2026

An excerpt from NOMERGENCY: Reclaiming Focus and Calm from False Urgency.

Your heart plummets.

It’s 4:55 p.m., five minutes until freedom, five minutes until you’re finally out the door to go and try that restaurant your friends have been raving about for months. But you’ve already caught a glimpse of the new e-mail from your boss, and it cannot be unseen.

The subject line reads: “Take a quick look?”

Your stomach twists.

Maybe I …

Lowercase PTSD: Why emergency staff are still hypervigilant

Amy Dinaburg, RN

Conditions

March 14, 2026

In the emergency department, you learn to function under pressure. You compartmentalize. You prioritize. You override your own nervous system in order to keep someone else alive.

During COVID, that skill became oxygen.

We worked in zones of four to eight critical patients, all unstable, all needing constant vigilance, or we were assigned to the lobby and hallways, managing 50 or 60 patients triaged as “non-critical,” knowing any one of them could …

Ketamine therapy for chronic pain and substance misuse

Olumuyiwa Bamgbade, MD

Meds

March 13, 2026

Health care works best when it solves real problems in real lives. That is why recent research on ketamine therapy for chronic pain deserves attention. The peer-reviewed study looked at 20 adults living with chronic pain who also struggled with substance misuse. The results suggest that carefully designed pain treatment may help more than pain alone. It may also improve mood and support recovery from substance misuse. In a …

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