Faith Forum: Integrating Mental Health in Medicine

Dr. Damon Tweedy is an author and psychiatrist. His latest book, Facing the Unseen: The Struggle to Center Mental Health in Medicine, is a powerful and urgent call to center psychiatry and mental health care into the mainstream of medicine.

As much as we all might wish that mental health problems, with their elusive causes and unsettling behaviors, simply did not exist, millions of people suffer from them, sometimes to an extreme extent. Many others face addiction to alcohol and other drugs, as overdose and suicide deaths abound. Yet the vast majority of doctors receive minimal instruction in treating these conditions during their lengthy medical training. This mismatch ignores the clear overlap between physical and mental distress, and too-often puts psychiatrists on the outside looking in as the medical system continues to fail many patients.

In Facing The Unseen, bestselling author, professor of psychiatry, and practicing physician Damon Tweedy guides us through his days working in outpatient clinics, emergency rooms, and hospitals as he meets people from all walks of life who are grappling with physical and psychological illnesses. In powerful, compassionate, and eloquent prose, Tweedy argues for a more comprehensive and integrated approach where people with mental illness have a health care system that places their full well-being front and center.

BIO:

Dr. Damon Tweedy is an author and psychiatrist known for his book Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University. His work centers on racial disparities in healthcare, both in medical education and patient treatment. He speaks candidly about the challenges faced by Black professionals in predominantly white medical fields and the social determinants of health affecting Black communities.