Education:
M.D. degree from the University of Cauca, Popayan, Colombia
Age:
62
Residence:
Solana Beach
Hobbies:
Gardening, walking
Family:
Wife, Alicia; daughters Lisa and Julie; son Rodrigo
Faced With Early Tragedy, Dr. Rodrigo Mu & #324;oz Took the Advice He Gave to Others
In his 40-year career as a psychiatrist, Dr. Rodrigo Mu & #324;oz has helped thousands of people with the emotions of numbness, helplessness, terror and fear after they’ve lost a loved one.
Yet, he still remembers the day his own life took a turn for the worse.
On that day in 1974, his wife died from a brain hemorrhage. The life that ended so abruptly left behind a widower and three children too young to comprehend the cold finality of death.
At the funeral, his colleagues patted him on the back and gently reminded him to practice what he’s been preaching to patients for years.
“(They said) now get busy and get to work, which is the same advice I am (still) telling my patients (today),” Mu & #324;oz says.
In the wake of recent terrorist attacks, Mu & #324;oz said his private office in Hillcrest has been swamped with patients asking if and when life in America will return to normal.
He blames the repetitive images of senseless destruction on television for causing a universal emotional response.
The knowledge of some 6,000 people buried under six stories of rubble is unbearable for nearly everyone.
Psychologists find people work best through a tragedy when they go back to their acquired rhythm, he says.
New Challenges
At 62, Mu & #324;oz has no intention of slowing his own routine. To the contrary, Mu & #324;oz, a lifelong advocate for the mentally ill, thrives on taking more responsibility.
In January, he will succeed Dr. James Hay as president of the San Diego County Medical Society. Mu & #324;oz is also presently a delegate to the American Medical Association and an editor for Clinical Psychiatry News and the Latin American Journal of Psychiatry.
He belongs to various medical boards, endowments and organizations.
Mu & #324;oz admits he’s always been an over-achiever. It’s one reason he opted to leave his native Colombia in 1964 for the United States.
Mu & #324;oz still remembers saying goodbye to his mother and father, whom he never expected to see again.
“At that time it was like going to the moon and my mother thought , well , I’ll never see you again,” Mu & #324;oz recalls.
Luckily, the trip to the moon was within reach.
But, it was a long time coming.
‘Matters of the Mind’
Born to a municipal judge and a devout Catholic mother, Mu & #324;oz developed an affinity for matters of the mind early in life.
“On the one side my mother would give us books about Christ and the saints and on the other side my father would be given us books by Kant and Marx and Engels,” Mu & #324;oz recalls. “They clearly did not see eye to eye on those things.”
After graduating from high school in 1956, Mu & #324;oz followed up on his early interest in behavioral matters by pursuing a medical degree at the University of Cauca in Colombia.
The medical school was one of the few progressive institutions in his hometown of Popayan, a tranquil town of 45,000 people.
It was a place where everyone knew everyone, and the young either buried the old or left early to follow their dreams. Mu & #324;oz was among the latter.
In 1962, Mu & #324;oz, then in his early 20s, continued his medical training at a mental hospital in Medellin, Colombia.
“I went there with the image of my going into that center and spending my life there probably close to a lab studying a number of substances that were going to influence the function of the brain,” Mu & #324;oz says.
Colombia To Connecticut
Two years later, he found himself wearing his first winter coat and driving in the snow to his new job at the Fairfield Hills Hospital in Newton, Conn.
Mu & #324;oz still recalls his first day.
“It was like Christmas day they had all these machines referring to technology Colombian doctors could only dream of,” he says.
In the 1960s, the field of psychiatry was booming and for the first time hospitals across the nation were in short supply of psychiatrists. Many relied on foreign-trained doctors like Mu & #324;oz to fill the gap.
Mu & #324;oz says although his mentor, Dr. Daniel Friedman, treated him like a son, the two did not always agree about their work.
That was because, “In the morning, Friedman was a researcher and in the afternoon he was a psychoanalyst, so I told Daniel there is a problem, because I don’t believe in that (psychoanalysis),” Mu & #324;oz says.
Luckily, Friedman understood and even helped Mu & #324;oz find a new laboratory.
Dr. Eli Robins at Washington University in St. Louis offered Mu & #324;oz just what he was looking for.
Robins not only promised Mu & #324;oz that they were “going to find the criteria to diagnose psychiatric disorders,” but followed through.
“I would have stayed with him all my life if I wouldn’t have gotten married and had to support a family,” Mu & #324;oz says.
He says his wife-to-be, then a young sociology intern from Chicago, stole his heart by “talking research from the beginning.”
They were married in 1967.
New Priorities
Three years later, Mu & #324;oz and his wife Marilyn moved to small-town America. Sheboygan, Wis., a small, conservative town of Dutch and German inhabitants, seemed just the right a place to raise three young children: Lisa, Rodrigo and Julie.
But then came the unexpected death of his wife. Mu & #324;oz recalls feeling isolated and lonely and taking turns counseling patients and his young children.
At the time, Mu & #324;oz had become actively involved in the movement of Hispanic and other foreign doctors to gain equal status in the United States.
At the time, foreign doctors were treated like “indentured servants,” destined to work in the poorest hospitals for little money, he says.
One day, a friend asked why he lived in the Anglo-community of Sheboygan if he felt so strongly about equal rights for Hispanics.
Mu & #324;oz agreed and was excited when Dr. Manuel Barba, one of few Hispanics to offer comprehensive psychiatric services in San Diego, invited Mu & #324;oz to join his practice.
Barba, who is now retired, said he liked Mu & #324;oz right away, describing him as a “very capable doctor” and a leader in the Hispanic community.
The two doctors were determined to tear down barriers that kept Hispanic doctors out of local hospitals.
“We were showing by example that we were just as good as anybody else,” Barba says, and he adds, “Now we have an Anglo community in the minority.”
New Partner
In 1979, fate worked in Mu & #324;oz’ favor when he met his second wife, Alicia.
Then 19 years old, Alicia studied health care administration at SDSU and worked with several of Mu & #324;oz’ patients enrolled in a study.
Two years later, they were married, and Alicia spent the next three years at home with the children.
Alicia said age was never an issue for her.
But she admitted being a young adult raising three teen-agers had its moments.
“They didn’t really fully appreciate the maturity factor,” she recalls.
At 42, Alicia now helps her husband run the office and pursues a master’s degree in health care administration at UCSD.
The couple starts their day at 5 a.m. with a 3-mile walk along at the beach near their Solana Beach home, then head for the office in Hillcrest.
Besides gardening, reading and walking, the two feel destined to improve San Diego’s mental health care community.