Psychiatrist tells how he dealt with being shot

PSYCHIATRIST Dennis Charney knows trauma.

As the dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the doctor has researched trauma, its effects and people’s resilience in the face of distressing situations for three decades.

During his career, he has helped people through their worst moments and developed a “resilience prescription” — 10 methods for dealing with life-altering events.

The 66-year-old, who has worked with veterans suffering from posttraumatic disorders, never thought he would need a dose of his own medicine.

But a shotgun blast outside a Westchester County deli in August 2016 gave him a new perspective on the very subject he spent his life studying. Charney was grabbing breakfast at Lange’s deli in Chappaqua, a favorite of the Clintons, when a deranged former faculty member whom he had fired six years earlier ambushed him.

“He was definitely trying to kill me,” Charney told the Daily News. “It was a shotgun from 20 feet away.”

Charney lost a lot of blood and endured searing pain from broken ribs. Pellets from the blast, some of which had to be removed from his lungs, are still lodged in his shoulder.

The attempt on his life left him with seizures and headaches.

“It’s hard. Once you’re a trauma victim you’re always a trauma victim, and you have to accept that and move on from that,” Charney (photo inset) said.

That’s where his own research came into play.

Charney’s resilience prescription lays out 10 methods for overcoming trauma, such as “find a resilient role model” and “face your fears.” “I never thought I was going to have to use them,” Charney said. “And I’ve found some of them very helpful.” Charney, who is married and has five adult children, said his method of handling stressful experiences is to try to to see the positives through the haze of trauma. “If you can, you want to reframe what happened to you and try to make it a positive,” he said. Charney, who has returned to kayaking competitively and can bench more than 300 pounds, showed off his incredible recovery last week when he did 86 pushups in the third annual “pushup for prostate cancer” challenge at Mount Sinai.

Regarding his own experience and his long recovery, Charney said he’s ready to take on a new role.

“It gave me the opportunity to be a role model myself,” he said. “I’m going to be totally committed to helping victims of trauma.”

The shooting put his 30 years of research into new light, he said.

Last month, Charney read an emotional victim’s impact statement at the sentencing of his shooter.

Researcher Hengjun Chao, 50, will serve 28 years in prison after being convicted of assault and attempted murder.

“It’s personal,” Charney said. “I never thought I’d be shot.”

But the kind-eyed doctor has a message for others dealing with trauma.

“The message could be that recovery is possible,” he said. “People are facing really tough things. But there is a road map.”