Dr. Peter Berndt Psychiatrist in The Woodlands, Texas

About Dr. Peter Berndt

Peter Berndt, M.D. brings a lifetime of experience, first as a family physician and now as a psychiatrist, to his current work with individuals, companies, and organizations in The Woodlands, Texas. He was a small town family physician for 18 years. Dr. Berndt did all the things a family physician did in those times… everything from seeing patients in the office to house calls to delivering several hundred babies over the course of his career.

“Over the years, I saw more and more clearly how stress affected people and their health,” Dr. Berndt says. “To always treat many of the illnesses that came about when a patient was stressed eventually made it mandatory to explore ways and means to teach patients to handle stress more effectively and thereby attempt to prevent illness. Luckily, I had an associate, Jack Gear, M.D., who persuaded me to receive training in a workshop given by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. That workshop, the first of many, was a turning point because it dispelled my skepticism about medical hypnosis. I also saw that here was a way to perhaps be more effective in helping my patients relieve physical illness through psychological means. These techniques and interventions seemed much more interesting than simply handing out medication, except where it was strictly necessary. I began using hypnosis for conditioning for childbirth, and many conditions that I saw as being stress-related such as migraine headaches, asthma, and pain syndromes, and others. I was astonished by the results that could be obtained in many cases. After some years of combining family practice with psychotherapy it became obvious that I needed more training in the field of psychiatry.”

Dr. Berndt then began a psychiatric residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, which he completed in 1982. He has been in private practice since then, most recently in The Woodlands, Texas, after finishing a stint as psychiatric consultant for ICE at their detention center in Denver.

“I think that working in psychiatry is to me the most interesting part of medicine. To re-educate patients about more healthy behaviors and thinking patterns, to give them more control over themselves and to help liberate the healthy person within every patient is challenging but also extremely gratifying,” Dr. Berndt says. “The process of psychotherapy is demanding, requiring as it does a variety of skills: the ability to read a patient, empathy, verbal skills, and the ability to be supportive as well as insightful. The work is endlessly interesting and rewarding and the trust that my patients give me is the greatest gift anyone could receive.”