Charles Silberstein
On My Mind: Strategies for pandemic helplessness
As a psychiatrist, I am accustomed to hearing people talk about marital crises, worries about aging parents and troubled children, and struggles with compulsive...
On My Mind: Pandemic anger
Early one morning this summer, as I rode a horse down a narrow road, I saw a truck barrelling in my direction. I signaled...
On My Mind: The power of the stories we tell ourselves
Part-time Vineyarder and Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter has written an inspirational new book, “Think Outside the Building: How Advanced Leaders Can...
On my mind: Coronavirus, fear, and anxiety
With the worsening of news about coronavirus in the United States, it's understandable that many of us are experiencing heightened levels of fear and...
On My Mind: A personal story of family opioid and alcohol dependence
My father was his high school valedictorian, started and ran a community mental health center and a department of psychiatry, and had a hand...
On My Mind: Ketamine, psychedelics, and new frontiers in psychiatry.
A patient of mine lay on a gurney attached to heart, blood pressure, and oxygen monitors in the recovery room, or post-anesthesia care unit...
On My Mind: Shh! Your clinician probably loves you
This summer, a child psychiatrist colleague told me that he had been thinking a lot about love lately. We got talking about how having...
On My Mind: Sanity
Despite the wild fights with her mother, Merle was adored, admired, and doted on by her younger brother, Ken, who thought of her as...
On My Mind: The psychology behind taking medication
I take my blood pressure medication every day. It works. Not only does it feel good when I see my blood pressure where it...
On My Mind: Procrastination and precrastination
Most of us are familiar with procrastination, the tendency to put off until tomorrow what could be done today. In its most adaptive form,...
On My Mind: Narcissistic abuse
Some people are so thoroughly self-centered and uncaring about the needs of others that mental health professionals think of them as having a brain...
On My Mind: Great stress-reduction tools
I was on a deserted street in a strange neighborhood in Brooklyn, where I had visited family. The door behind me was locked shut....
On My Mind: Self-compassion
Can you imagine your friends saying to you all the horrible things you say to yourself about yourself? "Hi Ralph ... wow, you look...
On My Mind: Poverty
Recently, I waited somewhat impatiently for my turn to have labs drawn. The wait was perhaps 10 minutes. As I sat in the comfortable...
On my mind: A bible of alternative treatments in psychiatry
If fortunate, we find teachers in our lives who enhance the way we work and how we see the world. During my training in...
On My Mind: A public health campaign for the Vineyard
The Island Wide Substance Use Disorder (SUD) Coalition is an association of concerned citizens and health and social service organizations. A public health committee...
On my mind: How and why we detach from reality
In psychology, the term for detaching from reality is “dissociation.” There is a spectrum on which we all detach. Right now, as I write,...
On My Mind: Sugar and mental health
Few people leave my office without the advice to rigorously reduce their sugar and starch intake and to eat more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and...
On My Mind: The season of envy
For many Islanders, the coming of the summer season can be painful, not just because of the increased work burden, the crowded roads, and...
On my mind: What to do if you have a mentally ill family member?
Here are two facts: First, when there is family involvement in the care of people with serious mental illnesses, everyone does better. Second, family...