Sally Satel

Sally Satel, MD, is a Washington, D.C. based psychiatrist, a lecturer at Yale University School of Medicine, the W.H. Brady Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author. Books written by Satel include P.C. M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine (2001) and Drug Treatment:  The Case for Coercion (1999). Her articles have been published in The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and in scholarly publications like Policy Review on topics including psychiatry and addiction. Satel also serves on the advisory committee of the Center for Mental Health Services of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Education
Dr. Satel earned a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a Master's from the University of Chicago and a MD from Brown University. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Yale University between 1988 and 1993. In 1993 and 1994, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow with the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Viewpoints
In her book P.C. M.D., Satel critiques what she sees as the burgeoning phenomenon of 'politically correct' (PC) medicine, which seeks to remedy social oppression by ensuring the equitable distribution of public health. She argues that incorporating social justice into the mission of medicine diverts attention and resources from the effort to prevent and combat disease for everyone. She considers the idea of social determination of illness as "one of the most pernicious themes in PC medicine," and sees 'psychiatric survivor' information centers as promoting the work of anti-psychiatry groups.

In a June 2004 meeting of the National Advisory Council for the Center for Mental Health Services, Satel called for a vast increase in the amount of forced outpatient medical treatment of psychiatric patients, echoing views earlier stated in her Drug Treatment, The Case for Coercion.

Books

 * 2006 - The Health Disparities Myth: Diagnosing the Treatment Gap. AEI Press. ISBN 0-844-77192-9.
 * 2005 - One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance (with Christina Hoff Sommers). Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-30443-9.
 * 2001 - P.C. M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine. Perseus. ISBN 0-465-07183-X.
 * 1999 - Drug Treatment: The Case for Coercion. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. ISBN 0-8447-7128-7.