Dean Ornish, M.D., to Accept First Viswanathan Family Lifestyle Medicine and Psychiatry Award

Today, APA CEO and Medical Director Marketa M. Wills, M.D., M.B.A., will host the CEO Plenary, featuring the presentation of the inaugural Viswanathan Family Lifestyle Medicine and Psychiatry Award to Dean Ornish, M.D., the accompanying award lecture by Ornish, and a conversation with Wills.

“I think we need to kind of go back to our roots of helping people understand that, yes, drugs and surgery can be lifesaving, but the sorts of lifestyle changes we can make ourselves can also be transformative,” Ornish recently told Psychiatric News Editor in Chief Adrian Preda, M.D.

Preda spoke with Ornish ahead of the Annual Meeting about his legacy and what gives him hope for the future. Watch the video above for a portion of their conversation. Below is a lightly edited transcript.

Preda: Dean, you have been recognized as a Time 100 Innovator by Time magazine, as one of the 50 most influential members of your generation by Life magazine, as one of the most interesting people of the year by People magazine—and the list of accolades could go on and on.

But I’m really excited that you’re going to have another award—a well-deserved award—added to that list. You are actually going to be our inaugural Viswanathan Family Lifestyle Medicine and Psychiatry awardee, which you’re going to receive at the APA Annual Meeting.

You’ve changed medicine in many ways, Dean. What do you hope your legacy will be, and what gives you hope right now?

Ornish: Oh, that’s such a powerful question. I mean, to me, the light drives out the darkness.

As physicians, we need to see ourselves more than just as technicians. The science is important, I’m a scientist, but I think the art and the humanity of medicine is really so important. To the degree that we can combine the best of our science-based medicine, our evidence-based medicine, with our intuition and with our experience in the art of medicine, and not just the science of it, but blend the two together.

And not get too stuck in any disciplines—“I’m a psychiatrist, I only deal with this,” or “I’m an internist, I don’t really deal with the mind.” We have to really see people as a whole, because that’s how we can serve them the best. ■