INTERVIEW Pamela Cantor, M.D., explains the science behind supporting students after the COVID-19 outbreak.
PAMELA CANTOR, M.D. CHILD PSYCHIATRIST, NONPROFIT FOUNDER DISCUSSES STRESS, RESILIENCE AND THE NEEDS OF STUDENTS IN A POST-COVID-19 WORLD By Julie Phillips Randles
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EMPOWERED LEARNER
Pamela Cantor, M.D., was more than happy to answer the call to help the New York City Department of Education whose students were in lower Manhattan the day the twin towers fell on 9/11. As a child psychiatrist, she was prepared to work with students whose nightmares about that day were interfering with their ability to function and learn in a classroom. Instead, she discovered that it wasn’t terrorists that haunted them. Yes, 68% of New York City school children had experienced trauma sufficient enough to impair their functioning in school, but the lasting distress stemmed from growing up in poverty and facing ongoing adversity. And because she had the science to understand how the human brain works, Cantor was able to positively affect these students’ lives. But Cantor had another advantage, although that wasn’t the word anyone would use to describe it. Her own childhood had evolved around an ongoing trauma, and it was a therapist who showed a teenaged Cantor that she was a pearl in an oyster and not a damaged individual. This mentor supported her without wavering when she announced that she, too, was going to be a doctor despite the fact that she was an art history major and didn’t have a track record in science and math. Backed by this kind of belief in her success, she earned a bachelor’s from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.D. from Cornell University, where she was one of five women in her class. She entered private practice in child psychiatry with a focus on trauma, and was a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical Center and an assistant professor at Yale.