Emerging Voices
Cathleen Chen,
Psych DO
What was your path to mental healthcare?
From a young age, I've always been interested in human behavior and emotions and eventually majored in psychology during college. When I started clinical rotations during medical school, I realized how pervasive mental health was in all the different disciplines of medicine. I gravitated towards psychiatric patients in all fields - teenagers struggling with bullying and psychosocial stressors, patients with chronic medical conditions dealing with anxiety, first time mothers experiencing postpartum depression. My clinical rotations affirmed to me the importance of mental health in a person's quality of life. And on my psychiatric rotation, I found myself curious to learn more about mood disorders and psychosis. I became immersed with understanding each individual patient experience and the complexities of how a single disease process could present itself in many different forms. Since choosing mental health as my path, it's been vastly rewarding to delve into the many subspecialties of psychiatry. Choosing psychiatry has seemed like a first step and I'm excited to continue to learn more in this growing field.
How will this scholarship help you?
This scholarship will give me the opportunity to attend a conference where I can learn about the most up-to-date advances in the field of psychiatry, along with networking with other like-minded psychiatrists. Although, I've never attended a Psych Congress Elevate conference, I previously attended a Psych Congress conference and was inspired by the depth of material covered. These conferences have a way of motivating me to be better psychiatrist and continue pursuing knowledge in a field that is constantly growing.
What are your academic and/or career goals?
My goal is to work with young adults and help them through difficult transition periods in their lives. This age range is when we expect to see the onset of many mental illnesses and can be an important period of psychoeducation. I see myself working in college mental health, either on a college campus, or as an outpatient provider caring for this population. I am also interested in psychosomatic medicine and the intersection between psychiatric illnesses and chronic medical illnesses. I would like to continue teaching in academic settings as I find it rewarding to educate the next generation of physicians, while increasing my own knowledge base.
What does “exceptional patient care” mean to you?
To me, "exceptional patient care" means not only caring for your patients as you would a loved one, but also providing a wide range of novel treatment modalities including new psychopharmacological treatments, integrative medicine, and different therapeutic techniques. It means making sure the patients are seen, heard and understood. It means being attuned to the needs of your patient, so that you can collaboratively craft an individualized treatment plan. "Exceptional patient care" goes above and beyond the standard of care to help patients excel and achieve the life they desire.