GD AMA

infection said:

So in another thread, @Ron Mexico suggested an AMA for members. I volunteered to start it off. He mentioned creating an introduction and then a free-for-all. Not entirely sure what all to include in introduction, but here goes:

I'm just south of 40. We moved to Utah in '89 from the bay area, and I spent most of my life growing up in the Sandy. My parents had both been married previously, with my mom having three kids from her first marriage and my dad having one child from his first, very brief marriage. My parents together had my sister, who's three years older than me, and then me. I started posting on JFC in 2001, when I was 16, so I've spent well over half my life here as a member. After high school, I did a semester at SLCC at the Sandy Mall satellite location, before leaving on an LDS mission to the Midwest. I followed the Jazz peripherally by checking game scores and summaries by calling 1-800-TELL-ME (though that's only 6 numbers so I can't remember what the actual digits were you'd call). I had left in the middle of the post-Stockton-and-Malone season and returned midway through Deron's rookie year. I had 13 credits to my name from SLCC and when I returned I hit the ground running and graduated two years later. My wife and I met living at the same apartment complex about a year after my mission. During that time, I had worked in a steel warehouse and steel yard that was a pretty crazy physical job, but paid quite well for the time. I had done that part time until I graduated, before going full time. My wife and I had our first kid right when I graduated, so she stopped working and I went full time for a year while I was applying to medical school. A year later, we moved to Missouri for medical school and had another kid. After medical school, we went to central Texas for 4 years for a residency in psychiatry, and had two more kids. After that, we moved back to Utah where we ended up having a surprise #5 kid (this time a girl, as we had 4 boys previously). From there, we've been busy with our kids. I stay fairly busy with work, being involved in a few different things. Slowly over the past few years, I've been working toward finally putting out some music. In high school I did a little bit of recording as I play guitar, bass, drums and keyboard, and in the past couple months I've been writing a few songs that I've put down rough tracks for but I'm needing to get an actual setup on a computer rather than my old 8-track from high school. My wife an I spend a lot of time together and we're best friends.

Ask away.

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fishonjazz said:

Where in the midwest did you go on your mission?
I have a nephew who also went on a mission (though he went to south america) and who also went to missouri for school (he is there currently) to be a dentist. Is missouri also where navoo (sure I spelled it wrong) is? If so, did you go there and was it anything cool to see/visit?

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fishonjazz said:

Where in the midwest did you go on your mission?
I have a nephew who also went on a mission (though he went to south america) and who also went to missouri for school (he is there currently) to be a dentist. Is missouri also where navoo (sure I spelled it wrong) is? If so, did you go there and was it anything cool to see/visit?

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infection said:

I guess maybe further clarity, there are church history sites in Missouri, though on the opposite side of the state from where Nauvoo loosely borders Missouri. The church was headquartered in Independence (it borders Kansas City on the east), and there were numerous other church history sites in the greater Kansas City area. The town we were in was actually right in between Nauvoo and Adam-Ondi-Ahman. I guess I take back having never been to a church history location before Nauvoo. When I interviewed, I had combined my interview at the school I went to with an interview at another school in Kansas City, and we visited Independence then. The drive from Kansas City to northeast Missouri where we lived was almost three hours and there's really not much out there. My wife had remarked that she hoped I didn't get in there. We had our 2-3 month old with us and while I interviewed, they had stuff for my wife to do as there were a lot of families that went to that school and they were very welcoming. Contrast that with my interview the next day in Kansas City (relatively close to Independence in a pretty bad area) and my wife sat in the car the whole day, so it was definitely a contrast for her in how welcoming one school was to families vs. another. Anyway, on my way to that interview, there was this crazy segment of the freeway north of Kansas City that splits off in multiple directions and makes no sense. We ended up getting lost and I was late. On our flight back home, there was an advertisement in the airline magazine for a GPS (back before everything was on cell phones) and it showed a picture of that very spot we got lost, using that as an example as to why you would want a GPS. Not sure what the odds were on seeing that in a national magazine after I'd just got lost in that same spot.

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fishonjazz said:

Good responses thanks. I have another, more general question.
Do you know how the church decides where to send you on your mission? Is it totally random or do you get to provide some specific or general preferences (in country, abroad, warm, cold, different language or english only etc) and they do their best to get you to a place where you would be more comfortable and likely be more successful?

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infection said:

It is a good question and there's not any slam dunk answer on how that happens. I'm sure the process changes over time, but you'll see some consistent things reiterated. I believe it was while I was in the MTC that an explanation was given that every week or twice a week, someone from the First Presidency of Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will have a large monitor up that has a map of all the missions and what needs to be filled, and they'll have a second monitor that will allow them to pull up the applications and they can make the assignment from there. I'd imagine the process could change based on individual characteristics of who's assigned to do it. Part of the application certainly asks things such as where you've lived, (I believe) asks where you've had siblings or parents serve, or where you may have family (again it's been a while but this stands out), as well as your educational background and if you have any language capabilities. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, though, as you'll hear dozens upon dozens of stories of people who took X years of some language or are fluent in something and then they get called somewhere totally separate from that. I do know that two of my older brothers who went both got to go exactly where they wanted (Japan and Argentina). I believe my brother took some Japanese classes in college before that. I think there may have been questions asked in a stake president interview on foreign vs. domestic preference. Not sure if that makes it in anywhere. If you've got health issues, that's going to be taken into consideration.

But any time someone goes on a mission, everyone speculates about where it will be and the bias is always to some exotic-sounding location. When you open your call, or when people ask you where you got called, you can always tell there's disappointment or a feeling like you've left them hanging when you say "Columbus, Ohio."

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infection said:

So in another thread, @Ron Mexico suggested an AMA for members. I volunteered to start it off. He mentioned creating an introduction and then a free-for-all. Not entirely sure what all to include in introduction, but here goes:

I'm just south of 40. We moved to Utah in '89 from the bay area, and I spent most of my life growing up in the Sandy area. My parents had both been married previously, with my mom having three kids from her first marriage and my dad having one child from his first, very brief marriage. My parents together had my sister, who's three years older than me, and then me. I started posting on JFC in 2001, when I was 16, so I've spent well over half my life here as a member. After high school, I did a semester at SLCC at the Sandy Mall satellite location, before leaving on an LDS mission to the Midwest. I followed the Jazz peripherally by checking game scores and summaries by calling 1-800-TELL-ME (though that's only 6 numbers so I can't remember the actual digits you'd call). I had left in the middle of the post-Stockton-and-Malone season and returned midway through Deron's rookie year. I had 13 credits to my name from SLCC and when I returned I hit the ground running and graduated two years later. My wife and I met living at the same apartment complex about a year after my mission. During that time, I had worked in a steel warehouse and steel yard that was a pretty crazy physical job, but paid quite well for the time. I had done that part time until I graduated, before going full time. My wife and I had our first kid right when I graduated, so she stopped working and I went full time for a year while I was applying to medical school. A year later, we moved to Missouri for medical school and had another kid. After medical school, we went to central Texas for 4 years for a residency in psychiatry, and had two more kids. After that, we moved back to Utah where we ended up having a surprise #5 kid (this time a girl, as we had 4 boys previously). From there, we've been busy with our kids. I stay fairly busy with work, being involved in a few different things. Slowly over the past few years, I've been working toward finally putting out some music. In high school I did a little bit of recording as I play guitar, bass, drums and keyboard, and in the past couple months I've been writing a few songs that I've put down rough tracks for but I'm needing to get an actual setup on a computer rather than my old 8-track from high school. My wife an I spend a lot of time together and we're best friends.

Ask away.

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SoberasHotRod said:

I knew you were a doctor, but didn't realize you were a psychiatrist. What does your day to day look like?

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Safetydan said:

Does @infection Play any sports or have any hobbies? How do you spend your free time?

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infection said:

I do inpatient work where I run the unit that is more forensically based. Probably about 3/4 of patients have been charged with a crime and have been found not fit to proceed, so they are sent to us to restore to competency to move forward with a criminal case. The other 1/4 are civil commitments where people out in community hospitals end up needing a higher level of care and come to us. A large portion is stabilizing psychosis, which can be fairly rewarding as the difference can be rather significant. I've been doing this for about three years after I had left outpatient practice that I had spent 4 years in. I prefer what I currently do because the makeup skews toward psychosis and mania, with a smaller proportion of depression (that typically is addressed and resolved [at least in its acuity] prior to ever getting to us). Outpatient practice was mostly depression and anxiety with a very minimal amount of psychotic disorder or severe mental illness. It was very challenging in different ways and following people over a long duration of time is a trip. It's really difficult to put into words.

On the side, I've been a medical director for an inpatient geriatric psychiatry unit for the past 5 years and also do some other hospital work for a large healthcare system. The geriatric work is probably 80-85% dementia and related issues. I've never disclosed this part previously, but there were numerous issues with that job over Covid and its resultant policies that had catastrophic effects on human relationships but was too often dismissed as "it's just 6 months" when people were separated from their loved ones and died alone. The contrast with this is that over that same stretch of time, I had been a medical director for a youth residential treatment facility, and it was a very peculiar time trying to navigate the logistics of a public health emergency when you're ultimately the respondeat superior and there are numerous circumstances where what you need to do to do right by patients and families is at odds with public policy, not to mention the drastic age-risk stratification between those two populations and the blanket approach that covers both.

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infection said:

I do inpatient work where I run the unit that is more forensically based. Probably about 3/4 of patients have been charged with a crime and have been found not fit to proceed, so they are sent to us to restore to competency to move forward with a criminal case. The other 1/4 are civil commitments where people out in community hospitals end up needing a higher level of care and come to us. A large portion is stabilizing psychosis, which can be fairly rewarding as the difference can be rather significant. I've been doing this for about three years after I had left outpatient practice that I had spent 4 years in. I prefer what I currently do because the makeup skews toward psychosis and mania, with a smaller proportion of depression (that typically is addressed and resolved [at least in its acuity] prior to ever getting to us). Outpatient practice was mostly depression and anxiety with a very minimal amount of psychotic disorder or severe mental illness. It was very challenging in different ways and following people over a long duration of time is a trip. It's really difficult to put into words.

On the side, I've been a medical director for an inpatient geriatric psychiatry unit for the past 5 years and also do some other hospital work for a large healthcare system. The geriatric work is probably 80-85% dementia and related issues. I've never disclosed this part previously, but there were numerous issues with that job over Covid and its resultant policies that had catastrophic effects on human relationships but was too often dismissed as "it's just 6 months" when people were separated from their loved ones and died alone. The contrast with this is that over that same stretch of time, I had been a medical director for a youth residential treatment facility, and it was a very peculiar time trying to navigate the logistics of a public health emergency when you're ultimately the respondeat superior and there are numerous circumstances where what you need to do to do right by patients and families is at odds with public policy, not to mention the drastic age-risk stratification between those two populations and the blanket approach that covers both.

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olden_undercover said:

1) What do you think about the trend toward non-MD/midlevel practitioners (i.e. Psychologists, LCSWs, etc.) having the ability to prescribe medications?

2) There is a school of thought that certain modes of mental health therapy-- especially as it pertains to psychoanalysis-- are for people with 'Psy' in their credentials, and that social workers, marriage/family therapists, and others in that scope have damaged the credibility of mental health care. Super-curious about your opinions, and how you feel the various roles ought to play together in dealing with the mental health crisis in our country.

3) Related to #2, modalities-- evidence based and not-- are a dime a dozen (EMDR, ART, Narrative Therapy, Brainspotting, CBT, etc. ad nauseum). Yet evidence strongly suggests that really the act of doing something-- anything-- on the talk therapy front can be effective, once medical intervention has done/is doing its job. Thoughts on this? Do you have strong opinions about non-medical interventions, in terms of efficacy?

(Thanks. And apologies-- I'm sure you could write a treatise on all of this!)

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SoberasHotRod said:

Do you have secret diagnosis for any jazzfanz posters?

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SoberasHotRod said:

How can I overcome my Jazz addiction?

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infection said:

Of course. However, psychiatric diagnosis (as far as the DSM is concerned) is a collection of a few hundred diagnoses that are mostly just different manifestations of the same dozen or so issues, and mostly personality issues. So it's not anything fancy or some kind of secret trick or anything, but yes.


I've got just the thing!

View attachment 16854

It's worked wonders for me.

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SoberasHotRod said:

Lol, I don't hate Ryan, but I also tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. I have a good friend who knows him personally and can't say enough nice things about him.

The jerseys were an unforgivable disaster though.

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infection said:

I don't hate, either. But I do think he was likely a Bulls fan in high school when we were in the finals. I'm not much of a "maintain this for the sake of maintaining it" or super tribal and whatnot, but there are certain things that I have concerns about. Ainge should have been blacklisted. That's not to say I necessarily hate Ainge or don't think he can do good things (he's the antithesis of what we've historically done and we've needed larger doses of that in the past when the culture pushed us to maintain status quo). But I feel like any belief in the Jazz as an institution has disappeared. Ron Mexico numerous years ago mentioned that all the players on the team were not present in our past, and won't necessarily be there in the future, but we as fans have long-term skin in the game. It feels like the franchise is folding over to a bunch of outside guys who don't have long-term skin in the game, and they'll be gone long before we will.

Anyway...

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