Vaccine hesitant? 3 ways to weigh your decision

Vaccine hesitancy is something that we have been fighting from day one in this pandemic. [MUSIC PLAYING]

When it comes to vaccine hesitancy, there's three areas we look at. One is confidence. One is convenience.

And one is complacency. So when we talk about confidence, we want to ask them, what is it that you're afraid about? Let's talk about the side effects.

Let's talk about the efficacy. When we talk about convenience, we want to know things like cost, your ability to access it.

If you said, I have to drive five hours to get it, and I'm not so excited about the vaccine to begin with, so I'm definitely not driving five-hours-plus.

I'm not waiting online, plus I'm not going twice. I totally get it. And then complacency has to do with looking at the risks.

And do you believe that this is a virus that, number one, you're susceptible to, and then, number two, would actually impact you detrimentally?

So the threat is high. And if you don't think that the threat is high, you're going to be like, eh, never mind. So if you're able to engage the patient in a conversation--

I have a woman who is in her 50s. She lives with elderly parents. They got vaccinated, and she's still on the fence.

So it was so interesting for me to learn, and what the different reasons are, and what people-- So let's not take a one-size-fits-all approach,

because even when it comes to hesitancy, you have a spectrum. You have people who say, I'm absolutely 100% against it,

and there's nothing you can do to change my mind. And then there's some people who are cautious. And they're like, given more information, I'm open to it.

Normally, as a psychiatrist, we don't do a lot of disclosure. But I tell my patients, I have gotten a vaccine. And I'm only sharing with this to you

in context, because here I am, still X amount of months later, still alive, still functioning, and able

to do my job. So I think, if we can share a little bit about ourselves, normalize the fear, validate the fear, but then give them real statistics and real information,

and then tell them that I'm open to answering your questions, and keep it like an open dialogue-- because I really do think that this is no different than when

we're trying to motivate patients for change or openness or receptiveness to anything in their life. [MUSIC PLAYING]