A Valpo Life in the Spotlight: Dr. Anand Popli

AnandPopliHaving the passion to not only help others, but also teach the future generation of psychiatrists is something that Anand Popli has devoted his time to doing. Dr. Popli is the Medical Director at Porter-Starke Services, Inc. and a professor at Indiana University Northwest, specializing in Geriatric psychiatry.

Community psychiatrists have always been an interest for Dr. Popli. After moving to Cleveland from India and getting all the training and certifications, Dr. Popli found his place at Porter-Starke and has been there for 18 years now.

“I had never lived in a smaller town. I was curious as to how there was going to be enough work as a full-time psychiatrist. Since I’ve been here, we have expanded quite a bit,” Popli said.

Coming from a teaching background, Dr. Popli was invited to start teaching at Indiana University Northwest and has now been doing that for 13 years. He teaches a psychiatric lecture to the medical students two weeks out of the year.

“I have always been interested in psychiatrics because I think of the brain as the last frontier. When I started, it was difficult for me to tell people that we don’t know enough, but the more I know over the years, the easier it gets for me to understand that there is still a lot more things we can learn about the brain,” Popli said.

One of the things that Porter-Starke aims to do for their patients is provide the best quality of care by attracting great psychiatrists and moving towards healthcare integration. Forming relationships with patients is important to the staff and getting to spend time to understand each case. People from not only Porter County, but Lake County and La Porte County travel to come and receive this high quality of care.

“As a director, I get to not only interact with the patients but I also get input from the staff and I particularly enjoy staffing with all the clinicians. It is a team approach here and everyone’s goal is to do as well as they can to help that person,” Popli said.

Dr. Popli also enjoys the time he spends teaching. He takes his vacation time from being Medical Director to lecture students. “I enjoy teaching because I think if you can impart some of the knowledge to some of the younger generation and hopefully some of them will get involved and interested in the field,” Popli said.

Valparaiso and the community have really become home for Dr. Popli and his family. Porter-Starke serves around 11,000 patients and Dr. Popli continues provide psychiatric help to the patients of Northwest Indiana.

“I think the most rewarding thing is to see the improvement in the patient. In any practice, you get busy and sometimes you lose your focus of why you are here. I’ve learned to always remember why I’m here, to help. You’re not going to fix everybody but if you can make a difference in the life of a few patients, that is rewarding.”