David Hellerstein, Jake Perlson
New York Academy of Medicine
Tuesday, October 29, 2024 5:30 pm EDT
The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
New York, NY 10029
In recent years, psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and MDMA have reemerged as potential treatments of psychiatric disorders. A host of new studies are now underway, with efforts to obtain FDA approval for treatment of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and other conditions. How will psychedelic treatments ‘fit’ within existing models of psychiatric treatment? Or will they transform psychiatry?
In his award-winning 2023 book The Couch, the Clinic and the Scanner: Stories from Three Revolutionary Eras of the Mind, psychiatrist and Columbia professor David Hellerstein, MD asks the question, “Who owns the mind?” Each psychiatric paradigm, whether psychoanalytic, DSM-based, or neuroscience, has made its claim to ownership. Now, psychedelic drugs raise this question anew. Join us for a stimulating discussion and book reading with Dr. Hellerstein, moderated by Dr. Jacob Perlson, Chief Resident of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.
About the book: The Couch, the Clinic, and the Scanner by David Hellerstein, MD
Who owns the mind? In depression and other disorders, what has gone awry in the mind and brain? And what are the most effective treatments of such maladies?
Over the past half century, psychiatry’s answers to these questions have undergone one radical change after another. In a sense, psychiatrists haven’t been able to make up their minds about the mind! After its mid-20th century heyday, psychoanalysis gave way to a worldview guided by the 1980 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which precisely defined mental disorders and their treatments. In the 2000s, our models for explaining and treating mental disorders have increasingly been inspired by neuroscience. The recent reemergence of psychedelic drugs raises provocative new questions about our models for healing the mind.
The Couch, the Clinic, and the Scanner (Columbia University Press, 2023) is a vivid first-person account of psychiatry’s evolution over the past fifty years. David Hellerstein—a psychiatrist who has practiced in New York City since the early 1980s, working with patients, doing research, and helping run clinics and hospitals—provides a window into these never-ending transformations. In 14 stories and essays, Dr. Hellerstein explores the lived experience of psychiatric work and the daunting challenges of healing the mind amid ever-changing theoretical models. The Couch, the Clinic, and the Scanner offers a perceptive and eloquent portrayal of the practice of psychiatry as it has struggled to define and redefine itself.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Hellerstein, MD, is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and an award-winning writer of nonfiction and fiction. His previous books include Heal Your Brain: How the New Neuropsychiatry Can Help You Go from Better to Well, A Family of Doctors, a memoir of 5 generations of doctors in his family; and two novels, Loving Touches and Stone Babies. As a researcher, he has done cutting-edge studies of depression, using MRI imaging to discover brain circuits related to illness and the effects of treatment. For the past five years, his research has focused on new psychedelic treatments of depression and other disorders.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Dr. Jake Perlson is a Chief Resident in the New York State Psychiatric Institute/New York Presbyterian-Columbia program. He received his undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Wisconsin, his medical degree from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and a Masters of Public Health from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. His interests involve psychedelic psychiatric, advocacy, and care for queer populations and people living with HIV. For the last two years of his residency training, he has worked with Dr. David Hellerstein on a project to understand the perspectives of mental health professionals with personal experience as users of psychedelics. He plans to pursue a fellowship in consultation-liaison psychiatry following graduation.