September Narrative Medicine Rounds with Damon Tweedy

Facing the Unseen: The Struggle to Center Mental Health in Medicine

A conversation with author Damon Tweedy, MD and Associate Dean for Student Affairs Dr. Jean Marie Alves-Bradford

For our first rounds of the school year we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Damon Tweedy, professor of psychiatry, practicing physician, and New York Times bestselling author of Black Man in a White Coat, who will speak to us about his most recent book, Facing the Unseen: The Struggle to Center Mental Health in Medicine. In Facing The Unseen, Dr. Tweedy guides us through his days working in outpatient clinics, emergency rooms, and hospitals as he meets people from all walks of life who are grappling with physical and psychological illnesses. In powerful, compassionate, and eloquent prose, Tweedy argues for a more comprehensive and integrated approach where people with mental illness have a health care system that places their full well-being front and center. 

Dr. Tweedy will be in conversation with Dr. Jean-Marie Alves-Bradford, Associate Dean for Student Affairs, Support and Services, and the Inaugural Dean of Medical School Professionalism in the Learning Environment at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. She has over 20 years of experience in patient care, medical education, and management of inpatient and outpatient psychiatric services in Upper Manhattan. Dr. Bradford received her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Harvard College and completed her Medical Degree at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University.  She has been a Columbia faculty member since completing her residency in Psychiatry at Columbia University where she served as chief resident. Dr. Alves-Bradford’s professional interests include medical education, faculty development, improving care in underserved communities, and advancing equity, diversity and inclusion and belonging. She enjoys creating clinical and educational programs to address unmet needs. She created a longitudinal upstander curriculum for medical students, a clinical service integrating primary care into outpatient mental health clinics and directs the health equity and justice curriculum for psychiatric residents.