In The Media

Linda F. Pessar, MD, director of the Center for Medical Humanities and professor emeritus of psychiatry, discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. She covers topics including resilience, symptoms of various mental illnesses, what to do if suicidal thoughts and feelings arise, and how the pandemic might exacerbate symptoms.

In an article about ongoing efforts to lessen health disparities between racial and ethnic groups in Western New York, Linda F. Pessar, MD, professor emerita of psychiatry at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and director of its Center for Medical Humanities, which seeks to increase the level of trust between physicians and patients who live in areas with poor health outcomes, is interviewed. “Our primary work is to make students aware of different communities and their experiences with physicians,” Pessar said. “We figure out ways to meet (the community’s) needs and reduce barriers to health care because among different ethnic groups there is a great deal of dissatisfaction and distrust.” The article also looks at the work of UB’s Community of Excellence in Global Health Equity and interviews Kim Strong Griswold, MD, professor of family medicine and research professor of psychiatry, who said the area “still has huge gaps” when it comes to making sure refugees have access to health care.

A story on a dinner held by doctors and students from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences to talk about health care with community members from Buffalo’s East Side interviews Linda F. Pessar, MD, director of the Center for Medical Humanities and professor emerita of psychiatry. Pessar said that with the population becoming increasingly diverse, it’s important that doctors start listening and adapting. “The entrepreneurial private practitioner practicing at the community in which he or she lives and grew up is a fading idol,” she said. "If we don’t become responsive to community members, we will not practice the medicine we need and hope to practice, and it seems to me that’s the bottom line.”

UB’s Health in the Neighborhood course offers first-year students in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences the opportunity to better understand medical disparities and how social determinants can affect people. “If you want to learn about the source of that ambivalence and distrust, to discuss what health care providers can do to improve that, you need to go in without your white coat,” said Linda F. Pessar, MD, a teacher and founder of the course, professor emerita of psychiatry and director of the Center for Medical Humanities. “How can you trust someone who you feel is clueless about your life?”

An article about health disparities in the local African-American community features Linda F. Pessar, MD, professor emerita of psychiatry and founder and director of the Center for Medical Humanities in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Pessar participated in a daylong event in April at the new home of the Jacobs School that was designed to bring awareness to the issue and come up with ways to ignite change, which was sponsored by UB’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute. “We have over 200 years of built-in distrust with the African-American community,” Pessar said. “We cannot offer care that will be accepted until we spend some time building trust.”

First-year medical students discuss the Health in the Neighborhood course at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and their experiences learning about health care disparities directly from those who are experiencing them in Buffalo. “In order to the learn from the community, it is important to engage as listeners and learners,” said Linda F. Pessar, MD, founder of the course and professor emeritus of psychiatry. The story focused on the national attention it’s drawing from the American Medical Association. “It’s important to have an organization like the AMA be involved in what we’re doing because they have a lot of influence,” said Lisa Jane Jacobsen, MD, associate dean of medical curriculum.

A walking tour of a Buffalo East Side community by students from the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences was designed to provide a better understanding of real life issues the students will encounter when they begin working directly with patients in their third year during clinical rotations.  

UB faculty are part of a Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Among those making presentations are Linda F. Pessar, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Center for Medical Humanities in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. “My focus will be on Beethoven's remarkable resiliency that led him to turn away from suicide, despite the social isolation and threat to his musical creativity that deafness represented,” Pessar said.