Thank you for visiting my site. Here’s a little more about who I am.
I’m a board certified adult psychiatrist, and a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine internship and adult psychiatry residency program, and of the National Institutes of Health Neuropsychiatry Fellowship.
Immediately after finishing my training, I took care of Alaska Native Americans for four years as part of an NHSC scholarship program, and learned about the lives of indigenous Native Americans, their healing traditions, and their complex history with the Europeans who stole their land and, frankly, destroyed their culture. I also worked with military veterans for 5 years, and learned firsthand about combat-caused PTSD from combat veterans who guarded their families from North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong, here in the US, even decades after returning from Vietnam.
I’ve worked in state psychiatric hospitals with persons who have had unspeakable trauma, plus schizophrenia, or other major devastating disorders; I’ve worked in medical-surgical hospitals with persons who have life-threatening medical illnesses and psychiatric illness too – some with debilitatingly, powerful drug addiction. I’ve held a private practice, and I’ve done psychotherapy with teens and adults across a wide spectrum of socioeconomic status and clinical needs. And I’ve been a medical director too, in several and varied venues, and have often been selected for leadership positions. Presently, I’m the attending psychiatrist in a state hospital for forensic patients who’ve come from prison or jail for stabilization and treatment; and I’m a medical director for a non-profit community mental health organization serving the under-served and disenfranchised.
As I age and grow, my professional interests have grown too, from conventional psychiatry and philosophy of science; to cross cultural psychiatry and traditional healers in my work with Native Americans; to evolutionary psychiatry and the triune brain, especially in caring for military veterans; to truth and its peculiar absence among the cardinal virtues especially in reporting medic errors; to a way of bridging the veteran-civilain abyss, as my dear Navy SEAL friend and brother and I have worked out; to the use of psychedelics to facilitate healing and growth; to the world of so-called parapsychology, quantum physics and the use of divined information in clinical practice; to the blending of conventional and sacred sciences; and to the power and special significance of lions viv-a-vis mankind, and my odd and recent recognition that the lion is my animal totem, hence my journey to the Global White Lion Protection Trust. I still ride my motorcycle fast, to seek the edge and feel alive. And I happily and adoringly continue to badger my two adult daughters.
– Benjamin Grasso
Benjamin Grasso, M.D. 