By Lee Hurley Photo by Jordan Wald
Kyle Echols is a well-known and well-regarded psychiatrist who has been practicing in Birmingham for 35 years. For those of us who think too much, it’s interesting to peek into the life of someone who has spent his career trying to decipher and adjust the mind’s arcane trajectory. There isn’t a simple explanation for Echols’ journey into medicine, especially psychiatry. One could look at his optometrist father whose expectations were conveyed by his own example of hard work and earned respect in the small community of Ruston, Louisiana. His dad expected the children to decipher their future and go for it. So they did. “I went to medical school because I could, Echols says. “I never thought about whether I really wanted to be a doctor.”
In fact, Echols knew more about what he did not want then what he did. “I didn’t see myself going into family medicine. That stuff never interested me,” he says. “I could talk for hours about the experience of being a psychiatrist, and how it was an unlikely and unplanned career choice for me. I had naïve notions about it early on like I thought it was simply a cool thing to know about. After 40 years, I still do. That part turned out not to be so naïve.” Psychiatrists start off the way doctors do, studying anatomy, biochemistry and physiology but then diverge to focus on psychiatric diagnosing disorders, psychopharmacology (meds), neurobiology and psychotherapy techniques. Echols did his training at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, a “legendary” place among doctors that was shuttered after Katrina. It was notable for being the largest hospital in America under one roof. Patients were not in rooms but in wards. “Every day you were walking into the reality of the human condition, frequently raw and primitive and fragile,” Echols says. “There was a psychiatric emergency room at Charity where people would routinely sleep on mats, 40 or 50 patients every night because there were not enough beds. Everyone smoked, it would’ve been unthinkable to ban smoking amongst the patients at that time, and the air was blue with cigarette smoke.” After completing his training at LSU’s medical school, Echols did a four-year residency at the University of Virginia Medical Center before moving to Birmingham with his wife Kelly to start his career.
What does one do to ease the mind day after day? Echols listens. And like a reassuring Delta pilot in turbulence, his empathy and authority are valuable tools. “If you act on your curiosity in a way that doesn’t threaten people, you’re conveying that you’re listening and that you’re engaged. And it’s a stunning experience to be really listened to,” he says.
It’s wishful to think that by visiting a psychiatrist one can walk away with a get-well to-do list. Echols admits he is often dealing in ambiguity. “You try to size up a situation quickly, pursuing the most salient aspects that you can influence,” he says. And sometimes, Echols adds, the best thing to do is nothing. Just listen.
Echols doesn’t read his reviews, but one person wrote: “Patient, innovative and not afraid to try new (and old) medications.” Unlike a therapist or psychologist, Echols has the added burden of and opportunity to prescribe medicine. Antidepression drugs have been described as a lifesaving option but can also be life numbing. Attention Deficit Disorder drugs have allowed children to focus while giving college students a buzz drug to help lose weight. Echols offers this, “Cars kill people every day, but we don’t consider giving up driving. Medicine plays an important part in our ability to help transition someone to a better frame of mind.” And Echols says he can tell when someone is asking for drugs they don’t need, “You develop a sixth sense about that.” Another reviewer wrote, “Dr. Echols gets to the point.” Echols responds, saying, “It’s tricky about that. You have to establish a relationship, but I try to be respectful of my patients’ time and money.”
Echols’ wife Kelly is also from the small Louisiana town of Ruston, yet while they knew each other growing up, it wasn’t until after college that they fell in love. Kelly went to the University of Alabama and made lifelong friends at the Alpha Gam house, which partially explains how they ended up in Birmingham. Kelly had also gone to nursing school at UAB and they both wanted to be closer to home. The couple has four grown children who went through the Mountain Brook school system. “To be married to a person who deals with others’ issues every day offers its own set of challenges,” Echols says. “You’re going to need some support, and I’ve been very blessed in that way. Kelly has been unfailingly supportive and encouraging.”
Echols has two other passions that blend in with his life of the mind: music and reading. “Typical introvert hobbies,” he smiles. He started playing the guitar at an early age and never stopped. “I got the bug” he says, “my dad had a guitar, and I just kept at it.” His reading has taken him all over the figurative map from novels to short stories to biography, Updike to O’Connor to Bukowski. “If I had not had this profession, I’d like to have reviewed books,” Echols says. “It’s an esoteric thing, but I really enjoy it.”
I had other questions like, do you think psychiatrists tend to be eccentric? “I’ve had to endure the stereotype that psychiatrists are weird,” Echols says, “but to me it’s weird not to be curious about who we are and how we function.” Touché. Next question. Do you think social media has hurt the young people who have grown up with it? “Everyone talks about how bad social media is, but it is really? Aren’t young people also connecting through media in ways we could not?” Echols asks. “Isn’t that communication?” My final question. When you think about your profession do you ever feel like that Bruce Springsteen song lyric, ‘I work down at the car wash where all it ever does is rain.’ Echols answers, “There are all kinds of sorrows in the world and all kinds of disappointments, frustrations and personalities. But there are also times in my work of hilarity and humor and times when people are doing fine, and it’s just a pleasant interaction. It’s not discouraging to address a problem in a concrete, practical way.”
