Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic

We have an outpatient psych clinic for all eight weeks of the block (including through neurology) to promote continuity care and exposure to ambulatory psychiatric complaints. I think it's a great idea as inpatient psychiatry is skewed towards severity. The clinic also breaks up the long week. My clinic is at the Walden House, a non-profit substance abuse treatment center which has an amazing array of resources from education for clients to get a GED to computers to work on resumes for jobs to community groups fostering social support.

I really enjoy it; it feels like family medicine with the community setting, the types of patients, and the role I play. However, the patients are complex. The first patient I saw started crying about ten seconds into the interview. I talked to her for over an hour (which before psychiatry, I would not have thought possible) but got such insight into her childhood, social stressors, problems with the law, substance use. At the end of the interview, she told me she felt an incredible relief and thanked me for merely listening. Just yesterday, I met my first transgender patient (male to female) who was struggling with depression. She had a fascinating mental status exam and we had a great conversation.