Last month, David Clayman accepted the Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Tribute Award, the most prestigious honor bestowed by the state Mental Health Association.
He's a high-profile psychologist, affable and infinitely quotable, a media darling, much in demand at conferences and seminars and as a forensic expert in court.
Last month, David Clayman accepted the Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Tribute Award, the most prestigious honor bestowed by the state Mental Health Association.
A specialist in medical-related psychology, he taught here for eight years in the West Virginia University Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry. An early leader in the death and dying movement, he spearheaded hospice service in the valley. He co-founded a trendsetting outpatient practice, Process Strategies Institute.
Then the blockbuster career imploded.
A casualty of his own success, he talks candidly about that dark time, his struggle with clinical depression and the benefactors who paved his journey back into professional prominence.
At 62, as director of Clayman & Associates, life glows again, enriched by lessons learned.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- "I'm the oldest of six kids in a Jewish family from the north shore of Boston. My dad was in the shoe business. He and my grandfather started the business in the attic of our home, hand-doing innersoles. I'd clean the inside of the machines, go in with brushes and scrape out the latex cement. I didn't like that very much.
"The question was never whether I would go college, but where. In my town, if you had below the 90th percentile in anything, everyone panicked. So we were all achievement-oriented.
"When I went away to prep school the summer I turned 16, I started working in a hospital as an inhalation aide, pumping oxygen. One of the men got sick and they asked me if I would come in during Christmas break. I worked alone from 3:30 to midnight. I had a death in the first 15 minutes.
"They had a code blue, and the guy died, and my boss, Eugene O'Conner, made me put my hand on the guy's chest. He said, 'What do you think is wrong with this guy?' I said, 'I think he's dead.' That day he gave me a lesson. He said, 'Have compassion but no passion, Care about your patients but never get involved.'
"A kid got hit by a car coming to our house. The hospital called me to the emergency room. He lived for two days. When he died, it struck me about distance. I felt pain about this kid and didn't know what to do about it.
"I could hardly work. I remembered what Mr. O'Conner said about not getting involved. I decided I had to figure out what I wanted to do. I wanted more patient contact, so I switched to orderly. I washed people, did bedpans, caths, got to know people up close and personal.
"I went to college thinking I wanted to be a physician, but it never fit me, all that memorizing. I didn't do well the first year. Then I took personality theory, psychopathology and psychotherapy. When I hit that, I knew this was what I wanted to do. My grades went to an A-plus average and I graduated with honors.
"I learned about resilience, about chasing the dream. I was always a dreamer, always thinking about what was possible.
"I wanted to be a medical psychologist. My undergrad honors thesis was on how to have a psychologist understand medical disease. I started out learning how to treat things like seizure disorders and cardiac cases from a psychological standpoint.
"In the fall of '74, I joined the faculty here, training medical students and residents in the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry. I was also doing consult service. I was doing death and dying.
He's a high-profile psychologist, affable and infinitely quotable, a media darling, much in demand at conferences and seminars and as a forensic expert in court.
Last month, David Clayman accepted the Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Tribute Award, the most prestigious honor bestowed by the state Mental Health Association.
A specialist in medical-related psychology, he taught here for eight years in the West Virginia University Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry. An early leader in the death and dying movement, he spearheaded hospice service in the valley. He co-founded a trendsetting outpatient practice, Process Strategies Institute.
Then the blockbuster career imploded.
A casualty of his own success, he talks candidly about that dark time, his struggle with clinical depression and the benefactors who paved his journey back into professional prominence.
At 62, as director of Clayman & Associates, life glows again, enriched by lessons learned.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- "I'm the oldest of six kids in a Jewish family from the north shore of Boston. My dad was in the shoe business. He and my grandfather started the business in the attic of our home, hand-doing innersoles. I'd clean the inside of the machines, go in with brushes and scrape out the latex cement. I didn't like that very much.
"The question was never whether I would go college, but where. In my town, if you had below the 90th percentile in anything, everyone panicked. So we were all achievement-oriented.
"When I went away to prep school the summer I turned 16, I started working in a hospital as an inhalation aide, pumping oxygen. One of the men got sick and they asked me if I would come in during Christmas break. I worked alone from 3:30 to midnight. I had a death in the first 15 minutes.
"They had a code blue, and the guy died, and my boss, Eugene O'Conner, made me put my hand on the guy's chest. He said, 'What do you think is wrong with this guy?' I said, 'I think he's dead.' That day he gave me a lesson. He said, 'Have compassion but no passion, Care about your patients but never get involved.'
"A kid got hit by a car coming to our house. The hospital called me to the emergency room. He lived for two days. When he died, it struck me about distance. I felt pain about this kid and didn't know what to do about it.
"I could hardly work. I remembered what Mr. O'Conner said about not getting involved. I decided I had to figure out what I wanted to do. I wanted more patient contact, so I switched to orderly. I washed people, did bedpans, caths, got to know people up close and personal.
"I went to college thinking I wanted to be a physician, but it never fit me, all that memorizing. I didn't do well the first year. Then I took personality theory, psychopathology and psychotherapy. When I hit that, I knew this was what I wanted to do. My grades went to an A-plus average and I graduated with honors.
"I learned about resilience, about chasing the dream. I was always a dreamer, always thinking about what was possible.
"I wanted to be a medical psychologist. My undergrad honors thesis was on how to have a psychologist understand medical disease. I started out learning how to treat things like seizure disorders and cardiac cases from a psychological standpoint.
"In the fall of '74, I joined the faculty here, training medical students and residents in the Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry. I was also doing consult service. I was doing death and dying.
"I started hospice. We brought everybody together in this coalition in '76. I look back when we collected 39 bucks a year to pay the phone and had one patient a year to this glorious huge thing that it has become. When we had a ribbon-cutting for a new hospice center, the executive director said he wanted me to cut the ribbon because I was the first. Well, that made me cry.
"My father died in '77. I got a call from my mother saying he had pancreatic cancer, and two months to the day later, he was dead. He was 59. He was a spectacular guy. There were 1,200 people at his funeral.
"I'd been real good at terminal care, but when I was the one driving into Boston to the cancer center, feeling lonely and realizing he was going to die, it just made me hate pain in people, and it refocused my commitment -- everyone who would meet me would meet the best of my dad.
"I made a promise to him when he died. He said, 'Live today. Don't wait. Be grateful. You've got to make sure people do that.' Every talk I've done, I've closed 99 percent of them with 'Live today. Don't wait. Be grateful.' I promised my dad his life would have meaning that way.
"When my brother was in drug treatment, my father didn't understand why I wanted to be a psychologist. We went to the halfway house, and the therapist running the group couldn't get to this woman. I asked if I could try. I got to where her pain was. I told the therapist, 'She's yours now.' After we left, dad said, 'Is that what you do?'
"I did my magic. God has given me gifts, my public speaking ability and my empathy and ability to feel people's emotions and pain. It's so inherently natural to me.
"I was at WVU from '74 to '81, then went into private practice as Process Strategies Institute with Steve Dreyer. We created a practice everybody trusted. We grew. We got too big. I chased a lot of dreams, chased them the wrong way. I didn't have the business knowledge. Then Steve and I had a falling out, and we split. I was stretched financially, and the plates fell.
"It was horrible. I stayed this side of bankruptcy. I leveraged everything I had. My wife stood by me through a very tough time. We found a way for me to go on. We merged with Highland for three years, which didn't work out. Then we started Clayman Associates. And this is where the miracle story comes in.
"I was broke. Couldn't get any money. I'm on TV, the public figure doing all the stuff I was supposed to do, but I was clinically depressed. I had switched my career from medical psychology into the legal world. I was testifying in a murder trial. I hadn't been out of the house in almost a week, but I went down there scared to death, depressed as all get out. I was on the stand for four and half hours.
"They said to be back for the cross-examination the next morning. We finished about 11:30. I called my wife and told her that Starship Enterprise was moving again. I was back! That's because I went back to what makes me who I am. I'm a good forensic psychologist. I was beating myself up for what I wasn't, not for what I was. My whole philosophy when I'm working with people is to focus on building from strengths and not necessarily overcoming your weaknesses. You do a lot better moving toward success than running away from failure.
"Seven men from Charleston financed my startup. Newt Thomas was one of the leaders, and Phil Goodwin. Great people. They gave me a chance to do this. Where else but Charleston would people take care of somebody like this?
"I've taken on a new colleague, Stacey Waller, a Ph.D. psychologist, and we have Nina Shinaberry and Kim Parsons, master psychologists.
"I'm not done. I'm at a new beginning. I didn't like going broke, but now, when I talk to a businessman about what it's like go broke, they know I know what I'm doing. So I've taken all the bad stuff and turned it into the ability for me to have legitimacy with the people I deal with.
"My dad's thing about 'Live today and be grateful'? My line now is: You've got to leave a mark. You've got to make the world know you've been here in some form. Don't just take up space.
"I want to have a legacy. Stacey Waller and Nina and Kim are my legacy. I'm mentoring now. Having a legacy is the coolest thing in the whole world."
Reach Sandy Wells at san...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5173.
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