Batya Swift Yasgur, MA, LSW

Batya Swift Yasgur, MA, LSW

Contributing Writer
Batya Swift Yasgur MA, LSW, is a freelance medical writer who writes news, features, CME materials, and books for a variety of venues and target audiences, including healthcare professionals and consumers. She has a passion for human rights activism and is the author of Behind the Burqa (John Wiley, 2002), a memoir of 2 Afghan sisters who escaped Afghanistan. In addition, she holds the 1995 Robert L. Fish Award for Best First Published Mystery Story. Her fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and several other publications. Beyond her desire to contribute to people's health and wellbeing through her writing, Batya offers emotional/spiritual support to clients in her Teaneck, New Jersey-based counseling practice to facilitate their journeys toward healing.

All articles by Batya Swift Yasgur, MA, LSW

General Psychiatry

The pandemic poses unprecedented challenges to the grieving process, setting the stage for more complex and prolonged reactions in those who have unfortunately lost loved ones. M. Katherine Shear, MD, Marion E. Kenworthy Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University School of Social Work, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, and Director of the Center for Complicated Grief shares her insight into this subject.

Personalized medicine “promises to move beyond data regarding the average effectiveness of treatments to identify the best treatment for any individual.” However, personalized medicine for depression necessitates “identifying characteristics of individuals that reliably predict differences in benefits and/or adverse effects of alternative depression treatments, including both biological and psychosocial treatments.”