My adventures in psychiatry…

I was born in the Windy City of Chicago, where my parents were attending graduate school. I’m told we rented a flat from the same fellow who wrote the jingle, “Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun.” I spent my school years living near Toronto, Canada. Here, I picked up French, played some competitive golf, and ended up working part-time for a psychiatrist while finishing High School. Well, first I worked at McDonald’s flipping burgers, which came with the perk of one free menu item EVERY SHIFT.

“I’m told we rented a flat from the same fellow who wrote the jingle, “Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun.”

At age 17, I made my way back to the USA (Provo, Utah to be precise) to do my undergraduate studies in Neuroscience at Brigham Young University including an honors thesis I ended up publishing on neuropeptides and appetite in rats. All those hours spent investigating the neuroscience of eating sparked an interest that would keep on growing, and one that still stands today. This curiosity about the relationship between food, body and mind led down a path of special focus and expertise in this field.

Today, I still serve as Medical Director of an Eating Disorders treatment program called Center for Change. I also became Coordinating Investigator for MAPS on their latest indication of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for Eating Disorders. But more on that later. Back to the college stories.

Apparently, I like to keep life interesting. My undergraduate years were filled with a wide array of extracurricular activities, I taught life skills and anger management to prison inmates on death row, traveled on my first humanitarian trip to Central America, and here, happened to deliver a baby in a taxi cab outside an ER.

That was only the beginning. During those college years, I also ended up in France on a two-year church mission and heading to Cambridge to study anatomy. I also had my first son--who turned into a skilled cellist and plant whisperer. I’m now a proud father to 5 lovely children, including two teenage girls and two identical 12-year-old twin boys.

After college, I attended med school at the University of Utah. Here, I had the wild idea of getting my MD and MBA degrees simultaneously. I remained at the University of Utah for internship and residency, then went on to complete a fellowship training in clinical research and genetics which focused on finding genes underlying neuropsychiatric conditions. During my fellowship, it became clear that genetics was a computational challenge, so I added on a post-doc fellowship in bioinformatics, and then joined the faculty at the University of Utah to do both genetics and clinical trials. Here, I had the honor and good fortune of being part of the team that discovered a novel rare genetic disorder now known as Ogden syndrome. Before the discovery of the disease, baby boys had been dying of an unknown cause.

While solving the mystery of Ogden syndrome, our team used new genome sequencing technology. The potential of this exciting new technology really piqued my interest and became the driving force for a genomics company that I later went on to start called Tute Genomics. “Tute” means personal, in the Na’vi language of Avatar, and the company’s mission was to give everyone access to their genetic information to live fuller and healthier lives. (As a potentially interesting aside, when my kickstarter project to democratize access to our genetic information got on the FDA’s radar, they promptly shut it down.

At Tute, we were backed by venture capital firms, big partner organizations (like Tencent), and Intermountain Healthcare, and then after acquiring George Church’s company out of Harvard which had raised $23 million, Tute itself was acquired in 2016 by PierianDx.. Today, I still sit on the board of the company. Whenever I get the chance, I like to share my vision for personalized, integrative medicine. (in fact, I gave a TEDx talk in Salt Lake City entitled “The Genome Revolution begins with You.”

My heart really lights up when I get to be involved in humanitarian pursuits. While at the University of Utah, I loved taking part in the University’s Global Health Initiative, which allowed me to make medical trips to post-quake Haiti, refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border, and rural Ghana. Also while working at the University, I couldn’t ignore some of the accessibility challenges we were having in mental health parity struggles, and so I contributed what I could to the cause, and started the Polizzi Free Clinic based in Salt Lake City, named after my dear, late grandmother.

“Not all wounds are visible, and everyone has their unique struggle. Pain is real, but…so is hope.”

Around 2011, I left the tenure-track faculty at the University of Utah to set up the psychiatric consultation service at IMC, Utah’s largest hospital (and Intermountain’s flagship). While here, I got to go both broad and deep on my burgeoning interest in psychosomatic medicine, or the study of things that involve both the body and the mind. Somewhere along the way I caught the bug for meditation, after learning about the pivotal role it can play in all of our journeys here on planet earth. Over the years, I’ve had the honor of leading countless groups, courses, and lectures on mindfulness meditation.

After realizing how hard it is to get people to sit still these days, I stumbled upon yoga as a gateway into meditation and embodied awareness and quickly became hooked. I’ve been teaching and speaking and spreading the good word of yoga ever since. In what little free time I have, you can find me biking, hiking, climbing, reading, sitting in stillness (or upside down in a handstand), and occasionally painting a big interactive outdoor mural to raise consciousness, or at least spark conversation.

And what am I up to these days? At Novamind, we are building the infrastructure and doing the research studies that will allow society to safely access psychedelic treatments in guided settings. We’re aiming for a completely new standard in mental healthcare. You can read more here.

I’m a firm believer that inside every person, no matter where they are in their journey, is an inextinguishable light, and the capability for a full human life. And sometimes getting mentally well, which could mean healing from a lifetime of pain, can take a long time (like physical therapy). Not all wounds are visible, and everyone has their unique struggle. Pain is real, but…so is hope.

Reid Robison, MD MBA