Bio
Vincent Abad, M.D., is a psychiatrist, healer, and seeker whose life has been a pilgrimage through continents, cultures, and unmapped interior landscapes. Born during the Spanish Civil War in the mountain village of Gestalgar—where his mother sought refuge from the bombs falling on Valencia—he was orphaned young and came of age under the long shadow of Franco’s dictatorship. From the beginning, his path was marked by exile, resilience, and an unyielding hunger for meaning.
His journey in medicine began in Spain, where he graduated from the University of Valencia. He went on to serve in remote villages and cosmopolitan hospitals alike—in Spain, Switzerland, and England. As a young doctor, he tended to the sick in rural outposts, practiced psychiatry in the quiet countryside near Oxford, and witnessed firsthand the wounds of body and soul.
Later, in North America, Dr. Abad completed his psychiatric training at the University of Vermont and then at McGill University, where a fellowship in Cross-Cultural Psychiatry transformed his understanding of healing. While on rotation at the Montreal Children’s Hospital—quarantined during a hepatitis outbreak—he was the only resident willing to remain on the ward. There, he cared for deeply traumatized children who had survived abandonment and abuse. That experience, etched in memory, taught him the sacred art of presence: how to stay when others flee.
His fieldwork took him to Jamaica and the Yucatán, where he witnessed how culture, myth, and spirit shape illness and recovery. These encounters solidified his lifelong commitment to culturally sensitive, human-centered care.
At Yale University, he established one of the first bilingual mental health clinics for Latinos in the Northeast—the Spanish Clinic in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood. It was more than just a service; it was an act of visibility, restoring dignity to voices that had long gone unheard.
Later, working with veterans in Florida, he turned his attention to the hidden wounds of war: the moral injuries no scan can reveal. He listened—not only as a clinician, but as a fellow soul, bearing witness to the pain that has no language.
After retiring from the VA, he began volunteering at the Caridad Center in Boynton Beach, Florida, where he continues to serve the often unseen and misunderstood Latino migrant population. He also works with Florida Atlantic University, contributing to both the Community Health Center and the Memory and Wellness Center.
This memoir is the culmination of a lifetime of service and introspection. It is not only a story of exile and healing, but it is a spiritual offering. Within its pages, Dr. Abad meditates on the meaning of medicine, the mystery of the mind, and the journey toward wholeness. He also shares pearls of wisdom for the young, those still charting their course, before the hour grows late.
