Lloyd I. Sederer, MD, is Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University School of Public Health; was for 12 years the Chief Medical Officer for the NYS Office of Mental Health, the nation's largest state mental health agency; and Contributing Writer for US News & World Report, Lancet, Medscape, Psychology Today, the NY Journal of Books, and the Washington Independent Review of Books. His writings have appeared in the NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, The Boston Business Journal, among many other publications. He was Medical Editor for Mental Health for the HuffPost, where over 250 of his posts and videos were published. He has served as Mental Health Commissioner for NYC (in the Bloomberg administration); Medical Director/EVP of McLean Hospital, a Harvard teaching facility; and as Director of Clinical Services for the American Psychiatric Association. He has written hundreds of articles on mental health and addiction, as well as book, film, TV and theatre reviews. He has published thirteen books. His latest books are Ink-Stained for Life (2020) and The Addiction Solution: Treating Our Dependence on Opioids and Other Drugs(2018). Look for his next book in 2023.
Dr. Sederer has led large scale, mental health disaster responses, including 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy. He was the 2019 recipient of the Doctor of the Year award from The National Council on Behavioral Health, and has been a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar in Residence. He is Chair of the Advisory Board of Get Help, CMO of Bongo Media, and Senior Advisor to Minded, Inc. He has taught medical writing for the lay public for 18 sequential semesters at the Columbia Department of Psychiatry/NYS Psychiatric Institute.
In this episode, Dr. Sederer and I discuss the thesis from one of his most recent books, The Addiction Solution, and the role of shame, the family, and medication assisted treatment (MAT) in substance misuse. We discuss Dr. Sederer's experiences with disaster relief with 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy, his process in figuring out a mental and public health response to the disaster (and why it wasn't typical psychotherapy), and how it has been similar and different to the COVID-19 epidemic from a public health perspective. We also get the chance to talk about his writing career and his new book, Code Blue, coming out later this year.
For more information on Dr. Sederer and to read his many writings, check out his website at www.askdrlloyd.com. Follow me @joshkorac on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for video clips, podcast previews, and more mental health content! If you are in a mental health crisis, please call 988 or go to your nearest emergency room. If you are from Colorado and are interested in scheduling a session, please reach out at sojourncounselingco.com/josh or josh@sojourncounselingco.com
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
03:08 Writing for the General Public
05:22 Focus on the Opioid Epidemic
08:33 Understanding Addiction and Recovery
12:03 The Importance of Family in Recovery
13:52 The Role of Family Therapy
17:11 Medication-Assisted Treatment for Addiction
19:07 Comparing Addiction Treatment to ADHD Treatment
21:35 Disaster Response: 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy
25:07 Approaching COVID-19 as a Disaster
30:52 The Impact of COVID-19
37:30 Reflecting on the Work During COVID-19
39:20 The Scope of Mental Health Services
41:51 The Role of Primary Care Doctors
43:09 Specialists vs. Primary Care Physicians
44:20 Advocating for Change in Mental Health Care
45:26 The Evolution of Mental Health Treatment
46:56 The Economic Factors in Psychiatry
49:09 The Intersection of Medication and Psychotherapy
52:57 Writing Memoirs and Personal Stories
56:49 The Corporatization of Medicine
*There were a few technical issues towards the end of the episode (as is usual with my luck), so thank you for your patience!
Alan Ritchson episode on bipolar disorder I mention in the intro: https://open.spotify.com/episode/44wQsyNpeuLK3mdcBXspL3?si=1c1dc22aca244ea7
