Welcome to Back from the Abyss, a place for psychiatric stories of hope and healing, recovery and redemption.

I'm Dr. Craig Hecock.

For some time, I've been wanting to do an episode where I sit down with a psychiatrist and talk about psychotherapy. Most psychiatry podcasts focus

on psychopharmacology, and this is due in part to the unfortunate reality that in the U.S.

Lots of psychiatrists focus primarily on med checks

and symptom management rather than integrated or holistic treatment.

There's a huge shortage of psychiatrists.

So in some respects, the med check model is out of necessity.

If everyone were doing what I'm doing, the shortage would be even more drastic.

But still, I believe that when psychiatrists what I'm doing, the shortage would be even more drastic. But still, I believe that

when psychiatrists put psychotherapy aside and start thinking of themselves as psychopharmacologists,

something crucial and deeply meaningful is lost. For this episode, I reached out to Dr. David

Puder, a psychiatrist and the host of the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

podcast. And how could I not be drawn to a podcast that celebrates psychiatrists during therapy?

We had a good time recording this episode. It was definitely way past my bedtime, so I hope I'm

coherent in the next hour, and I hope you enjoy this exploration of psychotherapy.

What I had proposed in David's game was to do almost like a back and forth question thing.

One of the things I love to do at dinner parties is, you know, sometimes you'll go and people have

these question boxes and you pull out questions and how did you meet your partner or what's the scariest thing you ever

went through as a kid and sort of a conversation thing and I thought it would be fun for you

and I did to sit down and just ask a bunch of questions and kind of play the question game back

and forth with an emphasis emphasis on the work we do and our passions and what's been difficult, what's been

...