lot of people who go through -- who experience these tornadoes and all the destruction and death and violence, is there a ptsd issue? there are people who get psychological help, get counseling? is that a big deal? something they resist? >> guest: after the tornado particularly there was a lot of counseling. even people at the national weather service had counselors come in because they -- it's their job to keep a cool head when these things happen, but people forget that the national weather service is right there in tornado alley and some of these people have family there. so it's so much stress so they had to bring in counselors. there was a lot of counselors that descended on oklahoma to help the teachers and the kids, and throughout the school year, the followup school year, the kid did things like art cryotherapy. i'my simpleso son who was in my book talked but how they used

art therapy to keep kids good clouds clouds and bad clouds. they had a ceremony to mark the one-year anniversary of the storms and she had pair by had a day where she hadn't cried about the storms she said the kidders so resilient but the adults are suffering. they played a slide slow of the victims. so tiny and so sad, and i remember a teaching starting to cry and seeing a little kid next to her grab her hand and squeeze it. and it was just one of those moments you just never forget. thank you.

[applause] >> booktv is on twitter. twitter.com/booktv. >> damon tweedy, what's your day job? >> i'm a psychiatrist. medical school. and i divide that time between treating patients, psychiatry, and teaching medical schools and residents. >> host: what made you go into industry? >> guest: good question. when i was in medical school i was looking between psychology and cardiology two thrift fields and was leaping towards cardiology. but when i started to get into into the nitty gritty of being a doctor i found i liked the idea of talking to peep and helping people with their problems and

-- than the mechanical treatment of their art. >> host: you're also an author now. what possessioned you write a book? >> guest: this book that i've written is basically a moment moyer of my journey through the medical training but written through the lens of race. there are a lot of physician authors out there but i think race is a really important issue in medicine, and these authors largely overlook the subject. that's a really omission because so many of the leading medical schools and teaching hospitals across america are situated in communities with large black populations, and many cases there's an historical tension between the communities and these large institutions. so that's the story that hasn't been told in a narrative way and so that's -- writing this book i was trying to tell two stories. my personal journey of backing a young black man from a working class background, scaling this medical ladder, and at the same

time telling stories of everyday black people facing serious health problems and trying to beef those stories together. >> host: what's you're background? sunny grew up in suburban maryland on the corridor between washington dc and baltimore, working class community, all black. that was my background growing up. >> host: were your parents educated? >> guest: well -- >> host: did they encourage your education? >> guest: yes, they did encourage my education absolutely. my parents grew up in the coined kind of time of generation in a rural part of virginia. didn't get a chance to finish high school. he went into the military, and worked as a food store -- a job in a grocery store and worked there as meat cutter until he retired. my mom didn't finish high school.

didn't have a chance to go to college. family couldn't afford that. she worked for the federal government for many years. i do have an older brother and he was really the first person in our family who went to college, and graduated from college. so he was that sort of role model in a way the community where we grew up in, it was almost like the way to get out was to be an athlete and that's the case of so many african-american communities. but -- so he was a living example of someone who could succeed in this other way and that really was an important part of my development. >> host: at what point in your life did you decide you wanted to go into medical school? >> guest: probably high school. i was a good student at an early age. when i got to high school, was able to test into this magnet program in our school district, science, technology program. the teacher made my do it. i didn't want to do it at first. that really was transformative. i was able to get close to people who came from different backgrounds, white asian people

and helped me see another world and another opportunity. and when i saw could i do really well i thought medicine seemed like good way to give back to the community and make a difference in a positive way and also to for people in community. i didn't have examples of that until then. >> host: black man in white coat. you write being black can be bad for your health. >> guest: yes. that's very true. basically any health measure number that you want to look at whether it's life expectancy particularly in men death rates from cancer, all considerably worth in black people than white people. any other group you can compare them to in america. and there are lot of reasons why that's true. possibly three wives looking at that. -- three ways of looking at.

that. theirs structure factors like black people having less likely to have health insurance more likely to be isolated in geographic areas where theirs less access to good quality care. then there's that's doctor-patient relationship factor where black people often, for many reasons of history, are kind of more wary of seeking treatment and get it much later and then those diseasers now more advanced and that's a big factor. thirdly there's community level factors in terms of individual health choices, diet and exercise. these are all factors as well in larger problems. so many ways of looking at it. >> host: how many black psychiatrists there are in america today. >> guest: i don't have an exact number but in general there are probably about five or six physicians as a whole are african-americans. psychiatry is a little less. maybe anywhere from three to

four percent. the numbers vary departmenting what data set you look at but it's small. >> host: your patients black white, mix. a mix. that leads to some interesting to goes. as i mentioned earlier many of the medical schools are located in communities with large black populations. durham where duke is, is 45% black. and johns hopkins, closer to baltimore, it's a big population of blacks. so you have large groups of black patients and very small numbers of black doctors no doubt about that. >> host: so what's the reaction you get from a white patient from a black patient? >> guest: well white patient? when i was younger and starting out, most people had very positive reaction, but many people or wary. they're not sure what to make of you. some people who i would say maybe they harbor some prejudices. some cases i had pretty frank

cases who were overtly prejudice, and i write about those in the book. i think on average most people are kind of a little wary but after you get to know them and get to talk to them, they kind of come around. there's this idea of having to prove yourself, which is kind of its own challenge. sort of maybe expectation that you're not as good as another doctor. you have to work with that. >> host: that's something you get from your white patients or patients across the board? >> guest: i think across the board. more pronounced in white patients but certainly black patient is if had to overcome the perception i'm less qualified. but it happens well if a patients. >> host: has it changed over the years in the last 20 years the perception of a black doctor? and how people view them? >> guest: i think there actually a lot more black doctors. if you go back, 40, 50 years

ago, very, very few black doctors. the numbers have increased in the last 30 years or so. that has affected perceptions some. it's still a battle, though, because in many parts of the country, still very few black doctors, and particularly never seen a black doctor in their life. >> why did you write the book. >> guest: i felt like there was an untold story and there's a lot of -- actually a lot of talk about disparities and inequality but not as much about in the health realm, and even more so not in a way that is successful, whether you're telling it through the stories of everyday people. certainly one important way of obtaining information but telling stories is a way to capture the essence of what it means to people on the ground. >> host: give us one example from the book of a patient's reaction to you positive, negative whatever. >> guest: one story that i think really kind of stands out when i was an intern, my first year

as that brand new doctor, that really most difficult year as a young doctor, and i was on a medical team, medical service and an elderly white gentleman came in and when he came to the hospital he saw a nurse black nurses black nurses aides several black staff and he made a comment in a not so uncertain terms he did not want a black doctor him didn't use that word but he did not want a black doctor. and it so happened he had the misfortune, if you will, of being assigned to the one team in the hospital that had a black doctor which was me. so it already worked out that way. so you can imagine that not the best way to start a doctor-patient relationship. so he came -- he had his perception and then because he had that perception, had negative thoughts about him as you can imagine. so this gentleman was very sick and old and really towards the end of his life, and his family had kind of similar approaches

in terms of the way they responded to me initially. but over the course of several weeks in the hospital, hour by hour day by day i was able to chip away at this huge racial divide we had and with the end he was very receptive to me. family was receptive to me. an amazing transformation, and made me think another when somebody i sick, you can chip away the superficial barriers we all have and kind of make a human connection. i think it's a lesson that we can learn from everyday life, lesson for the medical world but can be applied to everyday life. now days there's so much racial discussion that is often unpleasant. >> host: is there an unfairness to that? you have to work at chipping away the prejudices before you can treat a patient? >> guest: of course. sure. i talk about that in the book. a lot of aspects of it -- that's why i wanted to write the book very few black doctors

have written about this perspective and this experience. there are certainly -- i think it's more important for me to focus on how to deal with and it how i overcame it but it's setter -- certain live not there. >> "black man in a white coat." comes out in september of 2015. the author is dr. damon tweedy. you're watching booktv on c-span2. >> this is booktv on c-span2. television for serious readers. here's our prime timineup.