Presenting to AACAP

13 September 2020

[Above photo: Professor Tin Oo and I are watching Dr. Paramjit Joshi, Past President of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and a force in global mental health, discussing our presentation after it was recorded for the Annual Meeting. The computer is resting on the collected works of Selma Fraiberg, an uplifting foundation for a child psychiatry presentation. The whole operation sits on my laundry drying rack, since we were wisely advised to do the recording standing up.]

I have spent this weekend at Kelly’s home, a 5 level 3 bedroom, 3 living room affair with lovely wooden floors and windows everywhere looking out on the jungle behind the house. He set me up in a spare bedroom with its own bathroom and private deck overlooking the same greenery. My blood pressure and heart rate both dropped as I slipped into the chlorophyll, watching birds in the trees and a very healthy-appearing mongoose stroll across the lawn. It is a nice switch from Chinatown and I am welcome to use it as a weekend retreat, which I shall.

This morning we went to the American Club, a complex of tennis courts, swimming pool, poolside café, commissary, and 5 houses for Embassy personnel, all on 5+ landscaped acres on the north shore of Inya Lake. Kelly has standing tennis matches here regularly. He also buys Anchor Steam beer at the commissary. I met a number of interesting people, including Alex, an anthropologist at the University of Yangon, and her husband, Johan, the EU Ambassador to Myanmar. I also met Ashley, the Director of Irish Catholic Charities here, and her husband, David, and their two children—-Dylan and ?  (I write their names so I can refer back to this.) We were joined by Jose and Irene and had mango smoothies, lunch, and cappucinos.  It was all civilized and familiarly fun. Johan and Alex lived in Delhi for years and spent lots of time in Bhutan, with accompanying tales. Alex promises to identify the name of an anthropologist or sociologist (The Department of Sociology was disbanded by the Myanmar Military years ago.) at Yangon University. I want to better understand the sleeping-with-mother thing.

I learned on Thursday that our course will end September 30, rather than October 31. The month extension was to compensate the students for not having a vis a vis clinic until mid-June. But now that covid numbers are rising rapidly, we’ll have to close the clinic and that rationale is lost. I am sure that the Medical Superintendents of the students’ respective hospitals want them back ASAP, as hospitals are becoming overwhelmed and quarantine centers are all overflowing.

Friday night we did the recording for our AACAP presentation, 4 of us in my apartment, one in Baltimore, and one in California.  I edited my two students’ presentations carefully at their requests. I obsessed a bit about the entire affair, as I always do. Since we’d be meeting from 5-9, I made hummus, almost burning up my cheap blender, and had a crudité platter, as well as rice cakes, grapes, chicken noodles soup for 4, and coffee/tea. Only the coffee was consumed. I’ll admit, if you haven’t tried hummus, its appearance isn’t exactly magnetic. Only one of the 4 others present—Htun had brought her lovely 18yo daughter—was vegetarian. So I froze all the soup and noodles, ate most of the crudité the next day for lunch, and puzzled over it. I certainly eat their food when it is offered. Maybe since most Myanmar men don’t cook, mine was especially suspect. I know several of my students have said they don’t like European food. Hummus is Middle Eastern and the soup is Chinese/Myanmar. Maybe they were anxious. Who knows?

The recording went smoothly enough, although I am not a polished speaker. But I am real and enthusiastic and it was, as Donald Winnicott said when describing most mothers, “Good enough”.  I realize that one reason I like to write is that I can control my expression that way. When I speak, my mind goes in 7 directions at once and I want to embellish each point with an anecdote or head off into a particularly telling story. On paper I can control it. It is difficult for me to deny my mind’s desire to expand when I am speaking.

I did manage to create a PP presentation with a flow of photos interspersed with a few slides containing minimal text, triggers for my discussion. So rather than having to memorize my talk as written, I just told a story as prompted by each talking point. Then I practiced, so it was relatively smooth, and I think I got my points across. Mainly, it was to convey the fun, excitement, challenges, and beauty I’ve experienced here in order to entice others to try working in apple orchards without other pickers. Probably when I review it in mid-October I’ll find all sorts of fault with it—my demons speaking—but I said most of what I wanted to, so I’m OK for now.

One exciting spin-off is that Dr. Joshi at UC Irvine and Dr. Harris at Johns Hopkins each, independently, offered to give lectures via Zoom to my class. Since this group will end, somewhat precipitously, in 2 ½ weeks, we’ll look to next year. We could ask a number of prominent teachers of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and perhaps other mental health specialists, to record lectures on Zoom which could then be broadcast nationwide in Anglophone developing countries, akin to the webinar series I am now doing in Myanmar.  Since it may be difficult to have the lecturer do their own Q&A because of time zone discordance, a different Child Psychiatrist could lead a Q&A discusson in real time at the end of each lecture. These could be used, with virtually (no pun) minimal cost, anywhere and everywhere English is spoken.  I think it is a potentially powerful idea and would love to see AACAP adopt it as a global children’s mental health initiative. Zoom on!!

This is one of the thrills of working in a low-resource country: a simple idea, if enabled, can provide real value.  It can even be transformative.  Now I must remember to mask and wash and socially isolate so I can hang around long enough to see these, and some other, ideas bloom.

Joe Biden is going to have to fire a whole hell of a lot of political appointees when he is elected. The cheek of trying to suppress and alter Intelligence Reports or the CDC Morbidity and Mortality data to get Bozo re-elected!  Unsurprisingly, since sociopaths, by definition, know minimal guilt or shame.