Raquel Choua
Raquel Choua, MD
Attending Psychiatrist
NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Morrisania
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A Healer in the South Bronx
After medical school in Argentina, Dr. Raquel Choua came to New York for training in psychiatry, expecting to go back home to practice the kind of medicine she cared about. “My country is very much public health-oriented and has so many needs,” she says. “I thought I wouldn’t have that here. I thought this is a rich country and whether I stayed or not somebody else could do the job.”
It didn’t take long for her to realize what she could accomplish if she stayed. As an attending psychiatrist at NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Morrisania for 14 years, Dr. Choua has been a key member of a behavioral health unit whose patients are mostly immigrants. “The longer I was here,” she said, “the more I realized I was part of a team that was making a difference.”
As the head of a clinical program that provides comprehensive care for patients with anxiety and depression, Dr. Choua is a big believer in seeing patients in the context of their lives and circumstances. “Listening to people, being genuinely interested in them, being attentive to what matters to them is extremely important,” she said. “If they don’t have food in their homes, if they cannot pay the rent – everything is interrelated. In the public system, you have to have the flexibility to be helpful. I will call a patient after hours. If it’s important to a patient that I send a message to a podiatrist, I’ll do it. People come with letters and ask me to read them or fill out a form with them. So, it’s beyond psychiatry.”
She also works to help patients overcome the stigma of mental illness: “Sometimes people are identified with the illness – ‘Oh, he’s schizophrenic’ or ‘She’s bipolar,’ as if that was their identity. They need to know they are more than their illness.”