Dancing with Medusa: A Life in Psychiatry - Softcover

Zal, H Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1449071163 ISBN 13: 9781449071165

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2010

Synopsis

This is a story about Bella, a beautiful tale of caring, trust and emotional healing. It begins when Dr. Zal, a first-year resident in Psychiatry, meets a 20-year-old in the throws of a severe psychotic episode. It chronicles thirty-seven years of psychiatric treatment. Focusing on family relationships, he tells how both Bella and he resolved issues with a significant parent. Although his life was quite different, he was able to draw parallels that allowed him to empathize with some of her life events. Bella was a role model of strength, endurance and caring for her children and husband. She survived childhood abuse, molestation and a dysfunctional family background. In the end, mental illness did not ravish her life. Rather it was a physical disease. The book also shows how Dr. Zal changed from an inexperienced, anxious, psychiatric resident and become a wiser, more empathetic therapist. It illustrates how he learned to balance personal angst, the biologic basis of psychiatric illness and the uniqueness of the individual patient into a therapeutic tool. This balancing act, illustrated through Bella's story, is the dance with medusa that has occupied the core of his life in psychiatry. Dr. Zal is able to weave a 40-year history of psychiatry through this story, including sweeping changes in treatment, mental health laws and the role of the psychiatrist. Using Haverford State Hospital, he tells the story of the transition to community mental health. Bella's story is about hope, overcoming the stigma of mental illness and the role that determination can play in life success. Her accomplishments reinforce Dr. Zal's firm belief that although psychiatric medications can facilitate improvement in mental disorders, it is people working with people, on a sustained long-term basis, that is equally or even more important, in maintaining recovery and producing emotional growth.

About this title

About the Author

H Michael Zal, D.O., F.A.C.N., F.A.P.A., dist. has been a psychiatrist for over forty years. He is currently in private practice and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He is board certified, a Fellow of American College of Neurology and Psychiatry and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
 

Dr. Zal is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. He completed a three year Psychiatric Fellowship sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health at the Philadelphia Mental Health Clinic and Haverford State Hospital.
 

He is Emeritus at the Belmont Center for Comprehensive Treatment and served as President of their Medical Staff from 1995-1997. He was Chairman of the Psychiatric Service at Metropolitan Hospital in Philadelphia from 1980-1990 and a member of the University Of Pennsylvania Private Practice Research Group.  
 

Dr. Zal received the Albert Einstein Healthcare Foundation Physicians' Award for Excellence and the Practitioner of the Year Award, from the Philadelphia Psychiatric Society, for outstanding character, dedication and commitment to patient care.
 

He is a lecturer, medical writer and editor on mental health topics with numerous published articles to his credit. He is currently the Editor of the Journal of the Pennsylvania Osteopathic Medical Association. He is an award-winning author who has published numerous articles as well as three books entitled Panic Disorder: The Great Pretender and The Sandwich Generation: Caught Between Growing Children and Aging Parents. (Perseus Press); Dancing with Medusa: A Life In Psychiatry: A Memoir (AuthorHouse).
 

 He was the winner of the Eric W. Martin Memorial Award, presented by the American Medical Writers Association, for outstanding writing and the Frances Larson Memorial Award for excellence.

Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1449071163
• ISBN 13: 9781449071165
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208