Giving back, helping others, appreciating what you’ve got. That’s Tim Ando’s outlook.

Working at the Free Mental Health Clinic is one way that Ando, a third-year University of Iowa medical student, gives back: back to the community and back to those who have helped him along the way. Plus, he's learning a few things along the way about becoming a better physician and a better communicator.

“We as medical students, we are really lucky to be here. I think it’s our duty as physicians and physicians-in-training to do what we can to give back to the community, including our parents, mentors, teachers, who have helped us in the past. It’s only right to give back to the people who have helped us get here,” says Ando.

Getting into medicine and psychiatry

Growing up, he was very close to his grandmother, who developed Alzheimer’s disease when Ando was in high school. He wished he could do something to help her but was unable to do so at the time. This is what originally got him thinking about medicine—the desire to help her and others like her.

Not long after that, Ando’s close cousin started dealing with severe depression and anxiety. After reading his cousin’s blog detailing his struggles, Ando wanted to help him but didn’t know how. “I didn’t know how to talk to him about it. I felt like I was on the outside looking in. I couldn’t do anything for him then, but maybe I can do something now with my future career.” Hence, Ando's interest in psychiatry.

Fast forward another few years: Ando started struggling with his own mental health issues during the first couple years in medical school. One day while volunteering at the Free Mental Health Clinic, he was interviewing a patient with depression. The patient was a counselor herself and felt guilty—she was afraid she couldn’t help her patients if she was struggling with her own mental health issues and wasn’t able to help herself.

Although he couldn’t say it, he could relate to her, as he was dealing with his own struggles at the time. “I don’t know exactly how patients feel, but having that experience myself, I know how I felt. And that counts for something. I know how terrible and hopeless and guilty I felt. It motivates me more to help them, knowing that no one deserves to feel what I felt,” he says.

Working at the Free Mental Health Clinic

Now, after working at the Free Mental Health Clinic for the past two years, Ando has developed a strong interest in psychiatric medicine—in counseling and helping others through the power of words in conjunction with medicine. That’s why communication is so key in all medical practice, he explains, but especially in psychiatry.

“Counseling your patients, getting to know them, building trust—all those things are done with words. And doing psych interviews is a great way to practice that skill, even if you’re not going into psychiatry,” he says. The need for stronger communication skills is one of the most crucial takeaways he has gained from being part of the Free Mental Health Clinic.

Getting involved

The Free Mental Health Clinic is meant to provide transition psychiatric care to patients while they are on the wait list for the Community Mental Health Center (CMHC), and it is staffed primarily by medical students from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. Clinic is generally held every other Saturday morning at the CMHC.

Since the Affordable Care Act was put in place, the amount of Iowans without health insurance has improved from 10.8 percent to 6.2 percent. There is still a huge need, however, for mental health assistance, particularly in the Iowa City area. The Free Mental Health Clinic is not enough, but it helps fill that gap.

Ando would encourage other medical students to get involved with the Free Clinic: “The learning environment, you can’t beat it there.” The Free Clinic gives medical students more responsibility, and therefore more experience, than they might otherwise get from training in a typical clinical setting. There is an attending physician, but besides that, it is entirely student run.

“Every time I go, I learn something new.”