To Do the Most, Help the Least: A Spotlight on DCMS Member Dr. Lantie Jorandby

Story by Lana Borema, DCMS Intern

Dr. Lantie Jorandby came by her love of science and desire to serve early in life. With her father serving as a defense attorney who struggled to keep people off death row, and a mother who taught future generations, Dr. Jorandby felt she was destined to use science to help others.

But when asked if she always knew she would become a psychiatrist, her eyes widen as she shakes her head no.

“I actually had no idea I was going to go to medical school. I really thought I was going to do neuroscience research and work in a lab and get my PhD.” However, Jorandby soon discovered that “as much as I loved the neuroscience part, I didn’t really like the lab part. There’s a lot more technical stuff and it didn’t excite me as much as I thought it would.”

This move away from research allowed her to explore a future in service that her mother had only been able to dream of.

“My mother actually had always wanted to be a physician, but when she was growing up in the sixties it was not something that women did. That coupled with the expense of medical school delayed that dream. My mom became a teacher and married my dad. Her encouragement for my science pursuits led me to medical school.”

It was her mother’s constant push toward science that led Jorandby to start her undergraduate degree in psychology, but her passion for neuroscience was not uncovered until her sophomore year when she took a class focused on the brain. That passion eventually led her to work with faculty to create her own major in neuroscience at Vanderbilt University.

“I did some research with her and her husband who was also in neuroscience. I thought it was super cool to understand the different parts of the brain and how they create behavior. There’s an area of the brain dedicated to emotion and decision making and to memory and even addiction. At the time, I wouldn’t say it was cutting edge, but Vanderbilt didn’t have a major, so they let me create my own. Now they have a full-fledged major and a full-fledged lab.”

Starting with her mom and her neuroscience professor, Dr. Jorandby has always followed in the footsteps of the strong women she’s been surrounded by. So, it was no surprise that after working as a medical assistant in an OBGYN office after undergrad, she decided she wanted to become an OBGYN.

“What I loved about that office was that it was filled with amazing women physicians and I admired that so much and this drove me to go to medical school to become an OBGYN.”

However, she soon found in medical school that it was these powerful women that pushed her love for medicine, and not the specialty itself. Jorandby found herself returning to her undergrad roots, pursuing a love for the brain and mental health through psychiatry.

“People that go into this field usually have a personal reason whether it’s a loved one or a family member. My father had struggled a lot with mental health and addiction and that was definitely a big part of it for me. I saw how my dad struggled and I wanted to make a difference.”

She continued to a fellowship at Yale in addiction psychiatry which was followed by a position at Harvard University Medical School’s McLean Hospital as a medical director of the dual diagnosis unit. According to Jorandby, the individuals at these schools are “leaders” in addiction psychology and these experiences allowed her to be immersed in a “really intellectually stimulating environment.”

Taking her education and combining it with a passion to help individuals like her father, Jorandby continued to work toward helping veterans and vulnerable immigrant populations. Many members in her immediate family were veterans and she felt pushed to help after she noticed the trauma young soldiers were experiencing throughout the 9/11 wars.

“I was at the VA for about eight years. I started there basically as an inpatient psychiatrist. That is a tough job. You are in an inpatient unit, receiving patients that are involuntarily committed as they are a harm to themselves or others. What I started to see in those patients was a lot of younger soldiers and enlisted people that had brain injuries from explosive devices, addiction they had developed in the battlefield, and mental health and PTSD. Those were the top three things that I saw when people came to the unit that I worked. That really just affected me as I wanted to know more about what they were struggling with and I wanted to continue to see them get better. That really formed my experience to where I am now.”

In the years to come, Jorandby also spent time working with immigrant populations in South Florida at a non-profit free clinic for the immigrant population in Boynton Beach. This work was once again with a unique group of individuals who had experienced extreme trauma.

“We had it set up where they had dental services, medical services, other specialty services, and I was in the mental health department for about eight years.”

It was a rewarding experience, as Jorandby was able to help many women who came in to seek treatment.

“They had been traumatized, abused in their home country, and then they come here and they are still so vulnerable. They are undocumented, very little resources financially, they may have come with a partner who was abusing them in their country. It was a tough thing to see but it felt very good as we were the only mental health these women got.”

Jorandby explains that “it seemed only natural to move to something that helps people.” Helping people is indeed what Dr. Jorandby does. Inspired by her immediate family members and their struggles with mental health and addiction, as well as the smart, strong women she worked with, and her many unique opportunities in medicine, Dr. Jorandby has found psychiatry to be a place where she can best help some of the most vulnerable members of our population.