Dr. Payton

Well, we are all having to cope with the changes and uncertainty that this pandemic has presented to us. Many of us have had to make extraordinary sacrifices as we have given up our jobs and businesses as we cooperated with self-quarantining, thus reducing our interactions with each other as we avoid contact and when…

I was reading an opinion piece in the May 31, 2020 Sunday Review by Roxane Gay who reviewed all the bad things happening recently with many in our government continuing to not take responsibility for facing the truth of what is happening and then helping us to safely get through it. Ms. Gay then focused…

A CNN article from November 27, 2014 by John Blake speaks about the problem of racism without racists. This concern has been around for years as people who are not overtly racist unintentionally support racist institutions that promote ongoing exploitation of African Americans. It is only more recently that more Americans have become aware of…

Exploitation is defined as the fact of or action taken to treat someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work. Or, to selfishly take advantage of a person or persons in order to profit from them or otherwise benefit yourself. So, is every bad thing humans do related to or involve exploitation? Racism seems…

If race was invented to justify exploiting other people then being white has never been good. I have listened to a radio podcast “Scene on Radio” called “Seeing White” that discusses the history of being white including how it was started and what has kept it alive for over 400 years. One of the speakers…

I’ve become more and more convinced that listening to others is the best way to be connected to other people…no matter how much your belief’s differ from theirs. However, for listening to actually connect us to others requires that we listen without having any reactions ourselves. If you react, you are not listening and this…

A study in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine:Comparison of the characteristics, morbidity, and mortality of COVID-19 and seasonal influenza:a nationwide, population-based retrospective cohort study [of more than 89,000 patients with COVID-19 and more than 45,000 patients wth influenza [the flu]] was published December 17, 2020, showed that the risk of death was 3 times higher for…

The above quote is attributed to Chief Seattle, although it is not certain. Another quote attributed to Chief Seattle is “This we know: We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Another quote is: “This we know: all things are bound together! all thing connect.” Chief Seattle was…

Megan Brooks in the Vol. 49, No. 1, January, 2021 edition of Clinical Psychiatry News reported on studies indicating that middle-aged women with PTSD and comorbid depression are nearly four times more likelly to die from early death as are matched peers who do not have PTSD and comorbid depression. More severe symptoms led to…

In 2008 a law was passed that required parity in coverage so that coverage for mental health and substance abuse services had to be the same coverage as that for medical and surgical services. However, this law did not require.mental health and substance abuse services and there were other loop holes so that insurers could…