Educational keynotes and workshops by Shariq Refai, MD, MBA, on anxiety, emotional health, performance pressure, mental health literacy, and digital psychiatry. For corporate teams, professional associations, athletic organizations, and conferences.
Use the Media & Press Inquiries page for speaking and media outreach. Presentations and workshops are strictly educational and don't include individualized clinical advice.
Request AvailabilityMost mental health speakers split into two camps. The clinical ones are accurate and unreachable. The motivational ones are reachable and wrong. Dr. Refai's talks sit in a third category. Real psychiatry, translated into language a non-clinical room can actually use, with the disclaimers and the rigor an MD's title is supposed to carry.
The talks are practical, not preachy. The frameworks come from more than fifteen years of experience in psychiatry and mental health care and from the books and essays Dr. Refai writes for the general public. The format adapts to the audience. The content doesn't get watered down.
Dr. Refai speaks to corporate leadership teams, healthcare organizations, professional sports teams and associations, professional services firms, conferences and summits, professional associations and medical societies, and university audiences. The most common audience is high-performing adults inside organizations where mental health is starting to be taken seriously and the leadership is tired of the buzzword version of the conversation.
Why high-achievers get stuck in cycles of overthinking, what the nervous system actually does under modern pressure, and what useful tools and practices look like in everyday life. The talk takes the patterns most adults are quietly carrying, names them, and gives the audience tools they can use the same week. Best for general professional audiences and conferences.
The body moves first. By the time most people notice their thoughts, their nervous system has already shifted. This talk translates the physiology into plain language and explains why trying to out-think panic almost always makes it worse. Strong fit for healthcare audiences and high-performance teams.
Beyond the buzzwords. What organizations actually need to do if they want functional psychological safety, real mental health benefits, and a culture where high performance and wellbeing aren't pulling in opposite directions. Practical, candid, with the parts most consultants skip.
How digital health models can responsibly close the gap between demand and psychiatric availability without the corner-cutting that's defined the first wave of telehealth. What good telepsychiatry looks like, what bad telepsychiatry looks like, and what the next decade has to deliver. Built for healthcare audiences, technology audiences, and policy circles.
Insights from working with professional athletes, executives, and other high-stakes performers on maintaining baseline regulation when the pressure is constant. The high-performer pattern is a wiring problem, not a personality, and the wiring can be retrained. Excellent fit for athletic organizations, executive teams, and professional services firms.
The line between consumer wellness tools and clinical interventions is getting blurred in ways that cost real patients real outcomes. This talk draws that line clearly, with examples of what's working in the field, what isn't, and what good builders are doing differently. Strong fit for tech audiences, healthcare leaders, and investors.
Demystifying psychiatric care for non-clinical audiences. What the field has actually figured out in the last twenty years, what the public conversation still gets wrong about medication and therapy, and how to find care that fits a real life. Best for general audiences, leadership teams, and journalist or media-facing groups.
Keynotes typically run 30 to 60 minutes with optional Q&A. Half-day workshops run 90 to 180 minutes and include interactive segments. Fireside chats and panel formats available. Virtual keynotes are offered for distributed teams and international audiences.
All speaking engagements are educational presentations. They are not clinical services, do not provide individualized medical advice, and do not establish a physician-patient relationship with any attendee. All bookings are for educational, non-clinical purposes. By booking Dr. Refai for a presentation, the requesting organization acknowledges that the engagement is general education and that no clinical, advisory, or treatment relationship is created with any attendee. Dr. Refai cannot accept individualized clinical questions during or after a presentation; attendees with clinical questions will be referred to their own licensed clinician or to shrinkMD. Each engagement is governed by a separate written speaking-engagement agreement that supersedes any informal communication.
For speaking inquiries, including fees, availability, and customization, please use the Media & Press Inquiries page with "Speaking Engagement" selected as the inquiry type. Please include the audience, date or date range, format, and any topic specifics. Inquiries are reviewed within three business days.
Note: Presentations and workshops are strictly educational. They don't include individualized clinical advice or any form of physician-patient relationship.