David Viscott

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). He screened telephone calls and gave considerable amount of free psychological counselling to his on-air "patients."

In 1987 Viscott briefly had his own live syndicated 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.[citation needed] Many of his books were of a self-help nature, written to assist the individual with his/her 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 his four children, Elizabeth, Penelope, Jonathan, and Melanie.