Adventures in Integrated Care
Psychologist Rachel L. Goldman, PhD, says she will never forget a young man who was so obese he couldn’t even raise his leg a few inches off the chair while sitting in her
office.
“The average person doesn’t understand why people need
bariatric surgery and thinks, ‘Why can’t they just go to the gym
like I do?’” says Goldman, now the senior bariatric psychologist
at the Bellevue Center for Obesity and Weight Management at
New York’s NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and clinical assistant
professor at New York University School of Medicine. “What I
realized was that there really were morbidly obese people who
couldn’t take the usual recommendation of just walking to the
That realization shaped Goldman’s career. She got her first
exposure to bariatric surgery during her internship at the Medical
University of South Carolina (MUSC). After earning her doctorate
in clinical psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2010,
she did a postdoc specializing in obesity and bariatric surgery back
at MUSC.
By restricting access to the stomach or simply removing most
of the stomach altogether, gastric bypass and similar procedures
help people lose weight by reducing the amount of food they can
eat or how well they can absorb nutrients or both. According to the
American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, longitudinal
research has found that most patients maintain significant weight
loss — at least half of their “excess” body weight, or the difference
between their current and ideal weights — over the long haul.
While any surgery entails some risk, for obese patients who
haven’t been able to lose weight through dieting and exercise it
can be a medical necessity, says Goldman. In fact, bariatric surgery
bariatric
psychologist
A
Rachel Goldman helps
patients understand that
weight loss surgery is
only the first step toward
healthier lives.
By Rebecca A. Clay
