Becoming a doctors' doctor A memoir

Psychiatrist Myers' memoir sums up his decadeslong career as a "doctors' doctor." For many years, psychiatry and mental illness were stigmatized, especially among people in the medical profession. Myers started private practice in the 1970s, and "from the beginning I was referred and began to look after physicians" and their families, he says. This remembrance attempts to highlight a slow and difficult shift in the medical world from shunning doctors with psychiatric problems to helping and learning from them. The text often tackles depression and bipolar disorder, but it also looks into how the psychiatric profession shamefully addressed homosexuality, which was only taken off the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders list in 1973 and only fully reclassified in 1986. (The author notes that he later came out as gay at the age of 64.) One chapter also sums up the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, outlining how so many doctors with the virus were shunned, and highlights the mental health needs of those who tested positive for HIV. Myers' text is clear and easy to follow, but it may not immediately grab lay readers; after all, it's aimed, in part, at "the young reader, especially if you're a medical student or early career physician." Still, the work may call out to LGBTQ+ people, readers touched by suicide, or readers who have mental illnesses. When it focuses on multifaceted and heartbreaking stories of patients and Myers' personal anecdotes, it truly shines; for instance, Myers tells of a meeting in 2008 with a former patient who'd made significant progress but had since relapsed: "what was so striking…is that he looked and sounded exactly like the medical student who had reached out to me decades earlier in 1973--just an older version of the same lost, frightened, despairing man." Indeed, the memoir would have benefitted from more of the author's vulnerability and inner turmoil; toward the end, he often takes to writing in bullet points. Overall, this is a successful account of Myers' impressive career, but the stories are the star, not clinical accolades and professional takeaways. A thoughtful exploration of mental illness, wounded healers, and gayness in medicine. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.