Marcia Morris, MD ’89, will speak about the mental health challenges facing college, medical and graduate students—and her own career path as a psychiatrist—as part of the Alumni Grand Rounds series sponsored by the Office of Development and Alumni Affairs. Her talk, “A Psychiatry Career in Three Acts: Medicine, Motherhood, and Writing,” will take place on Tuesday, April 10, at 5 p.m. in the Beaumont Room, Sterling Hall of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, New Haven.
Morris will talk about the influence of her medical education on her career, in particular how her interests in medicine and writing were allowed to flourish and grow during her years as a medical student. “I had wonderful role models in Bernie Siegel as a doctor-writer and Florence Comite as a clinician-researcher-mother; both were successful in their fields and led a balanced life,” she says. When confronted with her own challenges in balancing work and family life, Morris says she found creative solutions and supportive mentors along the way who helped her achieve her dreams of practicing, parenting, and publishing, although not necessarily in that order.
Morris is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida College of Medicine and associate program director for psychiatry at the university’s Student Health Care Center. She has provided clinical care to college students, medical students, and other graduate students for more than 20 years. Morris has published research in college mental health and given national talks at the American Psychiatric Association, the American College Health Association, and the American College Counseling Association.
She has more recently taken on the goal to educate the public about the growing mental health crisis in high school and college students and has published articles in the New York Times, Tampa Bay Times, and the online news and commentary site The Conversation. She writes a parenting blog on college wellness for Psychology Today. Her 2015 New York Times article, “Dear Parent, Your Child Has Had a Psychotic Break,” received widespread attention from parents and mental health professionals. Her book “The Campus Cure: A Parent’s Guide to Mental Health and Wellness for College Students” provides tools for parents to prevent, identify, and treat the growing levels of anxiety, depression, and other problems seen on campus.
Morris says that while she has learned a great deal from her education at Harvard College, Yale School of Medicine, and Cornell for psychiatry residency, she credits her two children with teaching her how to parent college students. She will be forever grateful to Yale for bringing her together with the father of her children, husband and fellow classmate Michael Morris, M.D. ’89, an ophthalmologist in practice in Ocala. Alumni Grand Rounds is a series of talks that brings YSM alumni and students together for career-focused discussions about medicine and biomedical science. A light dinner will be served at 4:45 p.m. before the talk, which is open to the Yale community. Space is limited. Please RSVP at http://tinyurl.com/alumnigrandrounds.