Seeing the Possible Best in Everyone

Laura Basha

While I was interning in graduate school, the psychiatrist who was the medical director of our clinic for the county’s most challenging persistently mentally ill, became quite frustrated with me for being so idealistic with my patients. He said I was not reality-based enough to be able to assist them. I replied as respectfully as I could that, perhaps he was right, but my perspective was to see the possible best in every patient in order to elicit the same from them, in spite of their presentation.