Paul Dobransky, MD, loves people and their stories, so he excels as a psychiatrist who helps people find their road to happiness. He cross-trained in arts and humanities as well as science and — as an undergraduate — had the opportunity to sail around the world studying world cultures. His writing, teaching, patient care, and world experiences all became his life story.
“Our lives are stories. We are the authors whether we can see that right now or not,” he says. “It’s up to us to make choices that are always closer to happiness. We will reach it if we are willing to stand still, observe, think, and feel with an open mind.”
As a psychiatrist, he came to believe that there is always a clue, inspiration, or event “that leads to choices people make that can make them happier no matter what terrible things have happened to them.”
Who have you drawn inspiration from over the years?
My very first professor at the University of Colorado once said she’d never heard of a suicidal baby. We all start as innocent babies, and then terrible things happen to us from there. I’ve thought about her remark for 30 years now. What it means to me is that none of us were born with all these terrible mental burdens, pain, suffering, and self-loathing. We were happy and excited to be alive, and that’s our real destiny – to find our way back to that as adults.
What is the biggest challenge in psychiatry today?
Boys and men are being left behind, yet they account for 80 percent of all suicides. Somehow, they are not getting what they need to be healthy.
How has your work impacted your life?
There were many times that I had to personally sacrifice to do my work. But it is an immensely thrilling experience to have a front-row seat in the theater of someone else’s troubled life and then see them defeat the most awful, horrific challenges and win – find love, find a career passion, have children, feel peace. They become the hero of the story they’ve always wanted to be.
How do you achieve or attempt to achieve life balance?
I write at least ten daily pages of creative writing, as Steven King advises, usually after ten pm when everyone’s asleep.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Numerous friends. The Harvard Study of Happiness just proved that finally.
What do you consider your most outstanding achievement?
Nearly decoding the exact steps of human courtship from first meeting through marriage.
What is one of your top priorities now?
The development and implementation of public educational programs and treatments, such as Intensive Outpatient Programs which prevent hospitalization and create long-term stability for patients.
What do you see yourself doing 10 years from now?
Working at AllHealth, developing cutting-edge programs two to three years ahead of anyone else in the nation.
AllHealth recently completed its inaugural Employee Giving Campaign. What inspired your generosity to the campaign? Why be philanthropic?
I didn’t find AllHealth, but they have been incredibly kind and good to me in ways nobody deserves. The people working here are mature, highly competent, and devoted to a singular mission of helping people. They respect me, each other, and the clients we serve. They let me rest, to recharge enough to help new people and the people I have served for the upside of a decade here. And like no other place I have ever worked in 30 years in practice, they start a Foundation of all things.
So, of course, I’m all in with that.
It was some years a patient had a large family and not enough money to buy both medicine and Christmas gifts. Some people got together to get a very large, anonymous gift card which hopefully helped.
Now there’s a Foundation.
It’s fitting that AllHealth started it because the company goes 100% double its former efforts when something happens and people are in trouble. Covid, for example. When so many other companies went under or couldn’t afford to keep serving the public, AllHealth hired the right staff to get us through the storm, serving people the only way they could still be served. Almost overnight, converting to telephony and telemedicine, which it turns out the new world post-COVID sees as a new standard.
While AllHealth can go 100% overdelivering, the rest of us can work at least 10% harder, giving 10% more of our energy, time and money to those who clearly demonstrate they need it.
Such an attitude isn’t for everyone, but then again, this is the field I chose, and the last 30 years of practice showed me there was no way I did it to make money. For most of those years, it was the lowest-paying specialty. It’s because I always wanted to help people and to educate them in ways that make sense, are memorable, and maybe even, at times, entertaining (which helps it to be memorable.)
I’m just glad I found a place and people to be a part of who share the same values but are smart enough to make giving fiscally possible, responsible, wise, and a true investment in people and the community.
In the beloved Victor Hugo novel Les Miserables, the main character has no money, is in trouble with the law, and a holy man gives him all his silver because he is betting on the character he sees in him. It turns out that that character, Jean Valjean transforms the entire city into a center of commerce and lifts the lives of all its inhabitants. The holy man trusted Valjean’s moral direction and self-correction, a faith in what people do when given new chances.
So that’s what I think philanthropy can do and why AllHealth is an amazing vessel for containing and delivering it.