A warm, real, delightful lady dedicated to perfection, all adjectives that describe a child psychiatrist and author. Grace Ketterman, MD. Daughter of the pioneering parents, she grew up on the plains of Kansas, distinguished herself as a doctor in a field dominated by men and created a unique center for psychiatric care for teenage girls who took the lead in developing the state system to support families of prisoners and rise above the pain of personal and family tragedy. In all this, Dr. Ketterman never deviated from the ban on her commitment to Christ in order to penetrate into all aspects of her life, practice and writing. Still practicing psychiatry at the age of 72, Grace Ketterman is a quiet, modest, inspiring Christian counseling pioneer whose life and dedication can be a model for all of us.
Tell us about your past, home life, and how you got into the field of psychiatry.
GK: I was the sixth of seven children born to a family of farmers who migrated to Kansas from Pennsylvania; they were mennonite people, very persistent, hardworking, good qualities of the kind of family. My grandmother, however, was transformed into the Wesleyan Methodist faith by her husband's grandfather, whom I never knew. He was a rider on the Kansas Plains. Therefore, I have a very exciting family background. We lived on a farm outside the small town of Newton, Kansas, and went to the one-room village school, where there were 20-25 students with one teacher. All eight classes were represented, and I was the only one in my class for eight years. Then I went to high school, where I was one of 200 in my class one of the main transitions of my life. The cost of work has been high on my list since the beginning of my life. During the conflicts of the Great Depression, every family member was needed to help earn a living. We were really a team. When I was only 12 years old, I worked for a neighbor. We worked a lot on cooking for our farms, gardening, cleaning and a list of household duties. For about eight hours, I received a great amount of $ 1.00. But I felt rich!
During high school, I worked in the laundry room, served as a cashier in a restaurant and kept my grades high. I remained active in my church and under the ministry of the best pastor I have ever known. I did well in school, went to church college for two years, and then transferred to the University of Kansas, as World War II veterans came back again, moving from a very small school to a huge number of people. In college, I served as a maid, worked in a women's clothing store, finished work for a professor, worked in the bacteriology department and in the school cafeteria. I was ready to apply for medical school in my senior year, but I thought that I could not be accepted because so many veterans applied, and they deserve preferential recognition. In those days, women were not popular. The dean of our medical school gave me an interview to determine if I was a suitable candidate. He was a stern man, and I was scared to death. He asked me about my work history, and I looked at the works that I just listed. To my surprise, he smiled warmly and said: I see you are not afraid of hard work. And I suspect that you met a wide range of people.
This will help you become a good doctor! With gratitude, I was one of five women enrolled in medical school at KU, where I spent four years in strict training. After the medical faculty, I completed an internship at a Jewish hospital, the Menorah Medical Center in Kansas City. My husband and I were married in my junior high school class. During my internship, our first child was born, a tiny daughter who grew up to become an excellent psychologist. After my internship, I spent two years working in the field of public health. I got my liberal education there! I examined the poor, people in prison and prostitutes who were brought. We had a huge VD clinic. After my husband graduated from high school and was able to earn a living, I returned to the pediatric residence at the Kansas City General Hospital and worked in pediatrics for six long, busy, wonderful years. I soon realized why I was always tired, when I figured out how many hours a week I spent on work one week, it was 100 hours. So I knew that I had to make some changes. I was offered communication in child psychiatry, and this allowed me to limit my practice. Since then I have been practicing psychiatry.
In the days when you started your practice, was child psychiatry primarily a male profession?
GC: Medicine was largely dominant among men, there were about five women in my medical school. In my hospital, I was the only woman in all areas of medicine in our hospital, and for many years women were very much in the minority. This began to change, probably in the late 70s, and now there are an equal number of women, maybe more. So he has changed a lot.
What was it like to be a Christian in such a secular environment as a Christian, a child psychiatrist, a woman? It sounds unusual.
GC: When I started thinking about entering psychiatry, my younger sister, who is a registered nurse, warned me that psychiatry was rather secular, and in fact she considered atheistic. She was very concerned that they would not disappoint me in my faith. Therefore, I was very careful and spent a lot of time in prayer, in fellowship with the Lord and in spiritual fellowship in my church and Christian groups through my training. God really helped me avoid these pitfalls of doubt and helped me coordinate Christian principles and biblical truth with my psychiatric training. It was a wonderful walk.
Describe some of your early years in the Florentine home of Crittenton for unmarried mothers.
GC: After my two-year scholarship in child psychiatry, I stayed at work in the hospital and, again with guidance and help, made the lion's share in the work on developing the first inpatient program for adolescents in Western Missouri. The Health Centera mentality is growing wonderfully, gaining experience for me. Then the state mental health system became unbearable to work with us and most of us in the Department of Child Psychiatry, which have grown together over these four years. I needed more time with my family and then three children. I took a position at the maternity hospital, the home of Florence Crittenton, and worked with unmarried mothers, most of whom were teenagers. It was perfect for me. I had pediatrics, so I could take care of the children. I had training in psychiatry, so I could help with the problems of the mother. I had some experience with families by then, so it was a great time for working, limited, crisis-oriented, a lot of time for my family, it was a good era of time.
After about three years, I was faced with incredibly rapid changes in the unoccupied maternal scene. Teenage mothers either took abortions or retained their children, and the need for shelter at the maternity hospital became insignificant. After three months, we turned from thinking about adding to our building, because there were so many unmarried mothers who applied for asylum to so few applicants that we could not pay our bills. We were looking for the needs of our community, and that there was no treatment center for emotionally problematic wounded teenage girls. There were treatment centers for boys and boys, but not girls. In my ignorance, I decided to go on to create a boarding school for teenage girls. God helped us get this program, and when I realized how necessary it was, I helped raise about six million dollars for a couple of years to build a wonderful children's mental hospital with 100 beds on 150 acres of land. With our administrator, we have developed a very unique, successful program, very scripting-oriented, faith-oriented faith. After 15 years of very good success in this program, the health insurance business has become a turn for the worse, and the ability to keep children long enough to do the specific work that they needed, simply dispelled our efforts. We went from a three-month stay in residential programs to a maximum of three weeks. It disappeared by about five days. Therefore, the entire program that we built should have been changed and, unfortunately, never restored to the good quality of its previous years.
How did you manage to integrate your faith and practice?
GK: I think that the main thing is absolute confidence that the truth of the Gods is the Truth. Everything that seems to contradict his truth must be understood and explained. Sometimes it is a matter of understanding and explanation; sometimes it’s about saying that I just disagree with the fact that I can understand this theory or technique, but I really disagree with it. God fulfilled my commitment, and I think the Holy Spirit truly is the carrier of truth. He is the spirit of truth, he truly guides us, and, knowing that he undoubtedly helped me to remain an honest supporter of my faith in practice.
Give an example of when your Christian faith played an important role in your work in child psychiatry.
GK: In my school days, I remember how I worked under the supervision of a Christian family. I was very categorically taught not to talk about religion, but I dared to distinguish myself by this, and when I felt that I was really guided by the Lord to talk about faith, I did it. This particular family had a good church background, but they moved away from it and were not very involved in any church. As a result of the problem they faced with their son, the wagers did not understand that they needed help, and they very willingly told about their faith, where they lost it and how they wanted to return it. My mentor at the time was a kind of contact-clad Christian, who has since returned to a wonderful walk with God. He told me that he believes that depression is really related to the fact that people like this family have lost touch with their faith. They are experiencing a sad experience. Grief and depression can be so similar, and I thought about it a lot when working with people.
How have you changed the field of child psychiatry over the years?
GK: Well, he moved from a more Freudian, developing specialty to a very permissive specialty. Many people show respect for children, and I believe in showing respect. But respect has become a precedent in teaching children to respect. They are so much respected, but they are not taught to return. Grace (1st row) in a field dominated by men! In the psychiatric field, we have moved from counseling and family guidance, family therapy, and the couple not being guided by a multitude of medications. I thought that as long as I could, but as new discoveries appeared, showing how much physiological change really exists, it has a gift from God, just like penicillin is intended for strep throat. Therefore, I use psychiatric drugs, but this is a kind of addition to insightful, supportive, guiding work that I do.
What other types of changes have you observed over the years in terms of treatment, especially children with psychological problems?
GK.: With the changes in managed medical care, our goals have shifted from finding a sufficiently complete healing for the child and family, which allow the child to return home and successfully live with his family. At some point, within five to seven years, we had 75-80% success with our children in terms of the lack of permanent hospitals without legal problems and their ability to adapt to their homes and communities. We have moved from this success to the impossibility of measuring change. And from good counseling, we went only to offering a cooling-off period for families in crisis, the opportunity to treat the patient, and, I hope, to build the child into an outpatient postoperative care program.
How does Crittenton apply to most children today?
GK: They get very short inpatient care, and then they still have what we have developed as a full-time program, a special excellent school in which children have academic success, some constant counseling and some rest therapy. They continued to focus on very intensive family therapy, which is the key to making any progress.
Could you say that the insurance industry and managed help set the course for Christian counseling?
GK: To some extent, and terrible, yes, they are. When I turned 65, I realized that I needed to get away from the heavy load that Id had taken. Therefore, a new medical director was hired, and I tried to remain an assistant and mentor. Unfortunately, the new director was not interested in my mentoring or any Christian approach. I no longer influenced the hiring of staff, as I saw how things were getting worse, I offered everything I could to save spiritual values, and, finally, I knew that I could not cope with sadness for the terrible loss of many good things, therefore I retired about five years ago.
What have you been doing since your retirement?
GK: I do incomplete private practice, which is very different, very useful. I love my private patients, and I kept writing a little. I have time for my grandchildren, and I have a really great life.
How did you get started in your career?
GK: You know, it was a very funny story. I began to tell patients who had a unique experience that I would like to write about them because they are similar to others, and they can be very useful. Finally, the patient said to me: “You always tell me to write, why don't you write? So I said, “Well, I don't have time. Someday, if I break my leg, I will write. After a couple of years, guess what? I broke my right ankle, and when I was in bed, I had two invitations to write. One of them was from a small Christian Sunday periodical, and it was painful to write only 200 words! But a friend then decided to write a book about intensified rebellion and thought that I could help with this, so I wrote him a teenage rebellion. The publisher must have compared my style or what I had to say, so I had more and more invitations to write. I never had to feel the horror that the manuscript was sent because I wrote at the request of the publishers.
Are there any of your books about which you were particularly well-received?
GK: My favorite book is "Understanding Your Child's Problems." I had spiritual growth when I wrote it, and I studied the Scriptures a lot. It can still be printed. This is probably my favorite, but not a bestseller. The most successful book is a small book cover called When You Feel Like Screaming, which I wrote with Pat Holt, a teacher from California. This book has had a long and vigilant career. Most recently, it was translated into Spanish.
What are you working on now?
GK: I just sent the second edition of the manuscript to the book about forgiveness, concerning some of the real tragedies in my life and how I learned so much about forgiveness through these experiences. Now he’s with the editor, and I guess he’s coming to print soon.
Tell us a little about how tragedy affected your life and your work.
GK: Well, I have experienced difficult times, as you can imagine. In pediatrics, I lost patients. In personal relationships, I had betrayals and many sad times. A terrible tragedy struck my family in 1984, when I discovered that my husband was in prison. We had some difficulties, and I just could not reach him. There was a lot of difficult financial pressure and debt, as well as a number of losses and grief. I tried to calm down and help, but could not. I suspected that he had an affair, so I finally applied for a divorce and ever for a divorce.
After about three months, we went out to dinner on Sunday evening, and he scolded me for this divorce, because he really wanted to do our marriage work. I said that I do not like anything better, and if it can change, I, of course, am ready to change. Nevertheless, he scolded me, and I could see that he really did not make the spiritual and relational changes that he needed to make. Less than 48 hours later, he called me from prison. He had only a minute to talk, enough to give me a piece or two of information that I did not know about. He contacted a female patient who used her teenage daughter as a kind of seductive bait. Я не знаю, как еще назвать это. Теперь его обвинили в сексуальном домогательстве ребенка. Спустя почти год разрушения его отправили в тюрьму, но по этому первому телефонному звонку я получил невероятное представление. Информация, которую он позволил мне понять, что происходило и насколько разрушительно. Но как-то я мог сказать, я понимаю, я понимаю, я могу простить тебя, а дети и я буду стоять рядом с тобой и помочь тебе в этом. Я до сих пор не знал, что когда-нибудь вернусь вместе с ним, но, по крайней мере, я хотел поддержать его через это. Для меня это был кошмар, для всех нас было страшное время, но я как-то смог продолжить. В какой-то момент я начал понимать, что это была божественная любовь, которая учила моего мужа, как вернуться к общению с ним.
Я ездил навестить его почти каждую неделю с другом, которого муж тоже сидел в тюрьме. Мой друг и я разработали группу поддержки тюрем для семей и заключенных, которая очень активна во всех штатах Канзас (в каждой тюрьме у нас есть аутрич семья). После четырех лет и нескольких месяцев в тюрьме Херб был освобожден. Через два года после того, как Херб был выписан из тюрьмы, мы почувствовали, что знакомы друг с другом достаточно хорошо, чтобы мы снова вышли замуж. У нас был замечательный брак, но он, безусловно, принял много изящества, много понимания и много прощения, чтобы обеспечить исцеление, и исцеление - это полный процесс на этом этапе. Из-за публичности люди знали об этой ситуации в моей жизни. Куда бы я ни пошел, чтобы поговорить с группами пасторов, группами консультантов, учителями были знакомые члены аудитории, которые подходят мне, если бы вы могли это сделать, тогда я могу это сделать. Поэтому я думаю, что Бог действительно использовал трагедию в моей жизни очень чудесным образом.
Каким образом вы считали себя пионером?
ГК: Я вижу себя дочерью и внучкой пионеров. Моя бабушка была первым членом семьи, приехавшим в Канзас из Пенсильвании, оставив всю свою общину людей. В день моей бабушки, чтобы покинуть Пенсильванию и приехать в Канзас на одном поезде, чтобы жениться на ком-то, кого она знала всего две недели, была, безусловно, новаторской. Я очень уважаю и восхищаюсь своими внуками и добрым пионером в моей крови. Для фермера мои убеждения были редкостью в оценке образования. Он хотел быть врачом, но не имел возможности. Поэтому он призвал всех своих семи детей пойти в медицину. Я был первым, у кого он был успешным. Я думаю, что мое обращение в медицинскую школу, даже стремящееся к такой карьере, было довольно новаторским в своем конце. Женщины в медицине считались пионерами в тот день. Продолжать работу даже после того, как у меня были дети, которых, возможно, я бы этого не сделал, если бы я был задним визитом, был также новаторским.
Какие наблюдения у вас есть для людей, которые могут подумывать о работе с детьми?
ГК: Работа с детьми - это тяжелая работа, не очень хорошая заработная плата. Когда вы видите людей в течение часа, вы не можете взимать большие сборы, которые даже семейные врачи взимают за быструю скорую помощь несколькими стежками и большой комиссией. Если вы достаточно альтруистичны, чтобы отказаться от заботы о деньгах и больше о профилактической работе, вы сможете работать с детьми. Поскольку веточка согнута, так растет дерево. Если мы сможем помочь родителям с беспокойным ребенком, мы помогаем всей семье. И если мы сможем помочь этому ребенку до того, как он или она будут погружены в трудности, которые приведут к преступлениям и тюремному заключению, какое огромное экономическое преимущество оно принесет нашей культуре и какая прекрасная личная радость - увидеть такую работу!
Какие у вас наблюдения о состоянии христианского консультирования?
ГК: Я думаю, что христианское консультирование иногда становится немного поверхностным. В нашем сообществе недостаточно семейного подхода, недостаточно групповой терапии. Я был полностью обучен групповой терапии еще в 70-х годах, но даже сейчас я не использую ее, потому что это сложная и очень тяжелая работа. Найдите консультанта для предложений.
Итак, как мы храним христианское консультирование от прекращения?
ГК: Я думаю, что те вещи, которые AACC делает: на конференциях, подчеркивая академическую ответственность, настаивая на хорошей подготовке, хорошо прочитав и обновив современные знания и исследования.
Возможно, мы все должны делать больше исследований и более широкий спектр исследований. Я думаю, что именно здесь христианское консультирование имеет преимущество. Лучшее, что я предлагаю своим пациентам, - это заботливое сердце. Когда они знают, что они настолько важны, что я иногда с ними плачу, я могу смеяться над ними, злиться на них, он делает то, что я думаю, что никакие техники в мире не могут сделать. То, что Бог хочет сделать через своих последователей в консультировании!
