Instructor Cites Need for Good Psychiatrists

              THE SHREVEPORT TIMES
Sunday, Aug. 6, 1972
Eyes Improved Methods
Instructor Cites Need
For Good Psychiatrists
By Margaret Martin
Times Medical Writer
Dr. John N. Richie thinks
"there's a crying need for good
psychiatrists" to meet the men-tal
health needs of the nation.
He intends "to work toward
that end," he said of his new
position as assistant professor of
psychiatry at Louisiana State
University Medical School at
Shreveport.
Richie, a native of Chatham,
and a graduate of LSU School of
M e d i c i n e in New Orleans,
comes to Shreveport from Mc-
Connell Air Force Base, Kan.,
where he was a major and chief
of the Mental Health Clinic. He
was a Fellow of the Menninger
School of Psychiatry, Kansas.
He entered academic psychia-try,
he said, because he feels
there is a need to develop
'more and better methods of
delivering mental health to the
people."
He is especially interested in
psychotherapy, the method of
dealing with patients, drawing
them out, getting them "to
resolve their c o n f l i c t s and
change their lives."
"Primarily, I am interested in
teaching others to work with
people,'' he said, in an interview
at the Psychiatry Department's
Linwood Apartment Complex
office.
Psychotherapy is much more
complicated than "talking to
people" and students must be
taught the methods of reaching
their patients.
"Such as having a person see
a patient in psychotherapy — he
reports what has transpired. We
discuss it with him and help see
what further steps he needs to
take." Richie said.
Psychiatrist-teachers tell their
students "not to let their own
conflicts enter the relationship
established with the patient"
and "we help him work through
the various phases of psycho-therapy."
Another lesson is "how to
help and care for people through
psychotherapy."
Students must also learn, he
said, to be at ease when they
Dr. John N. Richie
talk to a patient, "and not be
afraid to hear what the person
has to say — an important part
of any person's job, to be a good
listener, to hear, really hear
. . . " They, must learn not to
cancel out what the patient has
to say.
In psychiatry as in all of
medicine "we help some, cure
others — it depends on the
patient — and mutual goals."
At McConnell, Richie set up
the Social Actions Office for
treatment of drug users.
The base, he said "had a very
big problem" with drug abu-sers.
The men ranged from
airmen to sergeant, were age 18
to 25 and came from all areas 01 |
the country. Some had recently
returned from Vietnam.
The largest percentage of the
men were smoking marijuana
and hashish and taking LSD,
amphetamines and mescaline or
hash, but some returning from
Vietnam used heroin, Dr. Richie
said.
Under the military's new
privileged communication pro-gram,
personnel can voluntarily
seek help without penalty for
use of drugs.