Mental Health with Dr Eli Merritt Episode 823:
Stand Up! with Pete Dominick
Pete Dominick
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2023
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Hello Friends! I want to try something new with the show and host at least one hour a week where I am talking to someone very smart about mental health issues and struggles that will help us all deal with suffering and find joy !
So today I have Dr Eli Merritt back. Last week we talked with him about how to save our democracy but today we will talk about how we save ourselves.
Eli Merritt, M.D., completed undergraduate studies in American History at Yale, graduate studies in Ethics at Yale, a medical degree at Case Western Reserve, an internship in internal medicine at the Lahey Clinic, and psychiatric residency at Stanford. Upon graduation from Stanford, he opened private practices in San Francisco and Palo Alto, California, and received appointment to the Clinical Faculty at Stanford, where he taught resident doctors the twin disciplines of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology for five years. Following this position, he served for eight years as the president of the San Francisco Psychiatric Society before founding Merritt Mental Health.
Additionally, Dr. Merritt has held positions on the Committee on Medical Ethics at Stanford Hospital and the Council and Professional Education Committee of the Northern California Psychiatric Society. His honors include the Gulevich Award in Psychotherapy and Humanistic Psychiatry at Stanford, the Humanism in Medicine Award at Case Western Reserve, the Saunders Award in Family Systems at Case Western Reserve, and graduating Magna Cum Laude with Distinctions in History at Yale.
He has written on diverse topics in medicine, psychiatry, and medical ethics, including diagnosis, insomnia and depression, addiction, suicide prevention, informed consent, and privacy issues in mental illness. He has taught medical students and resident physicians courses on psychiatric interviewing, ethical standards and boundary violations, the placebo effect, hyperthyroidism, and medical decision-making, among other subjects.
Dr. Merritt is happily married and lives in San Francisco with his wife and two sons. In addition to his work as a psychiatrist, he enjoys travel, hiking, skiing, tennis, writing, early American history, community volunteering, and playing competitive board games like chess and backgammon with his two sons.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And now, from a solar-powered shed just north of New York City near a dying mall, which |
| 0:09.5 | is kind of how most towns are. |
| 0:12.2 | The beautiful bold and brave Pete Dominic! |
| 0:16.9 | Thank you and me! |
| 0:17.9 | Oh, those are such kind things that you said about me, beautiful bold and brave. |
| 0:22.6 | I like it. |
| 0:23.6 | Hello, my friends. |
| 0:24.6 | Welcome to today's episode of Stand Up. |
| 0:26.4 | It's the Mental Health Show. |
| 0:27.7 | I'm going to try to do one of these a week at least because we need it. |
| 0:33.2 | I need it. |
| 0:34.2 | And I really enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Eli Merritt. |
| 0:38.2 | Dr. Merritt joined me last Monday to talk about his book How to Save Democracy. |
| 0:43.8 | Of course, he's a political historian at Vanderbilt University where he researches ethics |
| 0:48.3 | of democracy and more. |
| 0:50.8 | But the first half of his career was dedicated to psychiatry and medicine and medical ethics. |
| 0:57.2 | Because he is a trained psychiatrist who went to Yale and Stanford and opened private |
| 1:03.7 | practices in San Francisco, California, and I thought, hey, well, this guy would be great |
| 1:08.8 | to talk about almost anything from democracy to psychiatry. |
| 1:12.6 | But he's an expert on insomnia, depression, addiction, suicide prevention, informed consent |
| 1:19.2 | and privacy issues and mental illness. |
| 1:21.3 | And I thought, this is a guy I really want to talk to about mental health. |
... |
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