Selected Remarks on Correctional Psychiatry

This program is postponed

Rod Ponath, M.D.

Working as a psychiatrist at San Quentin State Prison is not what Dr. Ponath expected. In less than 15 years, he has witnessed it transition from what felt like the last health-care frontier in a third world country to a state-of-the-art setting with a $140 million health-care services building where one might discuss the unique cultural competencies required to treat prison inmates. He will review the special challenges working with this population, including issues such as bureaucracy, agency, federal court decisions and standards of care to drugs, gangs, reasonable vs. unreasonable paranoia, and heartbreak. Ponath joined the Department of Corrections as a psychiatrist in the early ‘90s at the California Institution for Women and came to San Quentin near the end of the decade. He was on the teaching staff at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, and is now an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCSF School of Medicine.

MLF:  Psychology
Location: SF Club Office
Time: 4:45 p.m. networking reception, 5:15 p.m. program
Cost: $20 standard, MEMBERS FREE, $7 students (with valid ID)
Program Organizer: Patrick O'Reilly