Ep. 16- Laurel Braitman/Learning Empathy Through Writing

The Story

For the last few years, Laurel Braitman, has been teaching writing and communications skills to medical students and doctors at Stanford University, helping healthcare professionals connect more meaningfully with their patients, their peers, and themselves.

Before that, she was dealing with the bizarre and destructive behavior of her adopted Bernese Mountain Dog, a passion-project that led her to research and write a bestselling NY times book about the prevalence of mental illness in the animal kingdom.

According to Laurel, the two areas of study are not so different. Nearly 30% of American medical students are depressed and one in ten have thoughts about suicide. Practicing physicians are even worse off with some of the highest suicide rates in the nation. And the rate of behavior disorders in dogs and cats mirrors that of humans. So we're not so different after all.

It's how we learn to communicate with one another that matters most. The most important thing we can do in the time we have here is connect with other people (and our pets), and ideally, make them feel less alone.