Editing David Viscott (section)

==Biography==
In 1980 Viscott began presenting his own full-time show on [[talk radio]], and was notably one of the first psychiatrists to do so (talk station [[KABC radio|KABC]]). He screened telephone calls and gave a considerable amount of free psychological counselling to his on-air "patients."

In 1987 Viscott briefly had his own live [[Television syndication|syndicated]] [[television|TV]] show, ''Getting in Touch with Dr. David Viscott'', providing much the same service as his radio show. In fact, the shows ran concurrently. In the early 1990s he had a weekly call-in therapy television program on [[KNBC]] in Los Angeles early Sunday morning after [[Saturday Night Live]], titled ''Night Talk with Dr. David Viscott''.

Viscott's signature style was to attempt to isolate an individual's source of emotional problems in a very short amount of time.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-26-tm-22135-story.html |title=The David Viscott You Didn't Know |first=Nora |last=Zamichow |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=January 26, 1997}}</ref> Many of his books were of a self-help nature, written to assist the individual with his own examination of life. His autobiography, ''The Making of a Psychiatrist'', was a best-seller, a [[Book of the Month Club]] Main Selection, and nominated for the [[Pulitzer Prize]].

Along with [[psychiatric]] advice, he would fall back on his medical knowledge to regularly devote entire segments of radio to answering [[medical]] questions. During these segments he would give medical advice. Many of the questions answered had to do with [[pharmacological]] advice. This was unique in the world of talk radio.

Viscott's popularity peaked in the early 1990s, and then fell sharply. A separation from his wife, followed by declining health, occurred at about the same time that he left the air waves. He died in 1996 of [[heart failure]] complicated by a [[diabetic]] condition. At the time, he was living alone in Los Angeles. He is survived by three of his four children: Elizabeth, Penelope, and Jonathan.