Tasked to understand people
“I have realized that a psychiatrist’s biggest tool in helping patients is his own personality. A psychiatrist will use his own personality to heal a problematic patient. Psychiatry also entails a lot of writing, speaking and conversing with people. And I thank God for giving me these skills because I do not know how I have come this far if I was not given the skills of writing and speaking in public, or conversing with a person.”
WHEN Dr. Vanessa Kathleen Cainghug, head of the Department of Psychiatry at St. Luke’s Medical Center — Bonifacio Global City, was still pursuing her medical degree and finally came to that point when it was time to pick her field of specialization, she said she chose psychiatry because she initially thought it was easy.
“I later realized [that it] was not,” Dr. Cainghug said in an e- mail to BusinessWorld.
She added that, later on, she became attracted to it because she wanted to understand people’s behavior better.
“I wanted to be able to converse, relate and understand people from all walks of life, which I could not do before I delved into psychiatry,” she said. “Although it sounds cliche, I also wanted to understand myself. And indeed, the field has changed me for the better. But I am also very aware that I still have a lot of room for improvement.”
Today, Dr. Cainghug describes her profession as a venue to help people handle their problems well and help them relieve their difficulties.
“I have realized that a psychiatrist’s biggest tool in helping patients is his own personality. A psychiatrist will use his own personality to heal a problematic patient. Psychiatry also entails a lot of writing, speaking and conversing with people. And I thank God for giving me these skills because I do not know how I have come this far if I was not given the skills of writing and speaking in public, or conversing with a person,” she said.
As an officer in the Group for Addiction Psychiatry of the Philippines, Dr. Cainghug said that a regular part of her job is managing cases involving drug and alcohol addiction.
For her, the problem of substance abuse is a very complex one and involves every segment of society.
“The patient is only the symptom bearer of a very complex problem. Managing a case of substance abuse is very complicated and will test all your skills. It is a challenge which most psychiatrists find very demanding,” she said.
One of the biggest misconceptions about patients under this category is the assumption that the person involved “is alone in his disorder”. She explained that substance abuse involves problems in the patient’s personality, mood, thought and cognition, coping mechanisms, genetics, family structure and relationships, the social circle the patient moves in, his neighborhood and society, and a host of other factors.
“We can also include the politics in his society. That is why the problem of substance abuse which our present government is trying to solve is an immense web of inter- connected problems; the solution to the problem is never simple,” she said.
When asked about her most significant career achievements, Dr. Cainghug said it’s every difficult patient she has successfully handled.
“A difficult psychiatric case usually comes unexpectedly. Each difficult case will put to test not only a psychiatrist’s career but his being a person and human being as well,” she said. “Most professionals will consider their positions in institutions or organizations as career achievements. But personally, I do not consider them as achievements. Instead, I consider being given a position in an organization or institution as a responsibility which I have to handle as a rite of passage as I mature as a psychiatrist.”
She believes that to be successful in the field of psychiatry, a person has to be passionate about the job and be open to learning. A young doctor eyeing a career in psychiatry, she said, will also need self- discipline, writing and speaking skills, a continuous desire to learn, and an awareness of himself.