Photo Via AB Korkor Foundation for Mental Health - Facebook
Adel B. Korkor, M.D.
“I am a highly trained medical physician who faints at the sight of blood.” That’s how Adel B. Korkor, M.D., of Hartland began a 2023 TEDx talk.
He paused as the audience laughed, then continued, “… not once, not twice, but many times. Turns out, physicians are human, too. Anxiety has been a part of my life since I was a little child in Syria.”
A successful nephrologist and clinic owner, diagnosed at age 40 with panic disorder, Korkor encountered society’s mental health stigma, which is perpetuated by “the unfortunate perception that mental illness appears synonymous with job impairment or incompetency,” says a 2024 article in Clinical Medicine.
Like many working in medicine, he hid his diagnosis from patients and colleagues. “I did not share it outside my family,” he said in a recent Zoom interview. Although he had his own practice, Korkor “worried about maintaining the trust of physicians who want to make sure they’re referring their patient to someone who is capable. It was not until I stepped down from my practice that I really shared my personal story.”
That’s when he took the show on the road.
After 37 years in academic and clinical medicine, treating kidney disease, Korkor has a new mission—to combat the stigma around mental health. He founded the A. B. Korkor Foundation for Mental Health, with its signature event, the Five-Fifty-Fifty Run/Walk, a five-kilometer run/walk that occurs in each of the 50 U.S. states over 50 consecutive days.
He also created an international conference for mental health care providers to explore the connections between exercise and mental health. “I want to bring the role of exercise to the forefront of mental health care because a lot of people can benefit from it,” Korkor said.
The second annual Motion Impacts Emotion Conference brings leading international academic and clinical experts to Waukesha this weekend, Sept. 27-28, to the Milwaukee Marriott West. It includes two full days of sessions, breakfast and lunch. The two-day registration fee is $195. Discounts are available for students. Register on the conference website.
A Personal Journey
At 40, Korkor was at home by himself one Saturday afternoon, his wife and four children overseas in Syria. “Suddenly, I felt this crushing pain in my chest. I started getting sweaty and dizzy. I was terrified. I called 911.
“In the emergency room, they had me admitted to the coronary care unit. A cardiologist ordered a cardiac cath (a diagnostic procedure). It was negative. But I was still having pain. I had another cardiac cath. Again, negative.
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“They brought in a gastroenterologist, thinking it may be an ulcer. He did an endoscopy on me. Nothing. He’s the one who told me, ‘I wonder if what you have is a panic attack.’
“As soon as I got home, I looked it up. I was a classic case.” Korkor went to a psychiatrist outside of the healthcare system in which he practiced (in order to keep it private) and was diagnosed with panic attack disorder. “Retrospectively, it became apparent I had panic disorders long before I was diagnosed.”
In his TEDx talk, Korkor recalled some telltale moments. At the beginning of every school year, when his mother assembled his school uniforms, he felt sick to his stomach. At age 17, in a biology class at the Medical College of Damascus University, Korkor inserted a long pin into the back of a frog’s neck and passed out. In his first human anatomy class, a fellow student cut into the body of a corpse and Korkor found himself on the floor. He fainted again in the hallway when he encountered another corpse. In his clinical years of medical school, as a surgeon pulled a vein out of a patient's leg, “the operating room nurse was resuscitating me from under the side table,” he said.
He sought help from a psychiatrist who prescribed medications, “none of which he was able to take,” he said. To make matters worse, “the stigma around mental health made it difficult to share my story with any of my family or even my closest friends.
“I had all these symptoms—dizziness, lightheadedness, heart palpitations. I always attributed them to something else,” he said. “It made medical school very challenging.”
He applied for residency in the United States and landed in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1974. He turned 24 a few weeks after he arrived.
There he experienced anxiety about learning to drive. “At age 25, I failed the driving test—not once, twice, but three times. Even after I passed the test, a sinking feeling in my heart, cold hands and lightheadedness dominated my driving experience,” he said.
Even as he succeeded in his education and career, he felt anxious about the way he pronounced words in English and later found the citizenship test “nerve-wracking,” he wrote in a piece for The Guardian about being an immigrant.
During a nephrology fellowship at Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, he discovered a park next to the hospital where he worked. He established a regular running routine and found it helped his nerves. “After several months of running, I started feeling better—less anxious, more able to concentrate, slept better and, above all, had fewer panic attacks without the side effects of any medications,” he said.
While Korkor continued running, it took a backseat to developing his career, getting married and raising children. His second fellowship, at Washington University in St. Louis, was followed by a year on its faculty. He moved to the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1981, where he was an assistant professor of medicine for seven years. In 1987, he opened his own practice.
Then he had his “big episode.”
“I decided to up my running game,” he said. “I figured by stressing my heart with running, I could learn to manage my panic attacks by assuring myself that my heart is okay.” He decided to train for the Milwaukee Marathon, ran the race and was pleased with his time. He has continued on the fast track.
“Running saved my life,” he told the TEDx audience.
Fighting the Stigma
In 2017, at age 67, Korkor felt financially, physical and emotionally ready to step down from his clinical practice, he said. A project had been simmering for a couple of years—to create a mental health foundation. A series of panic attacks in 2015, driven by professional and personal issues, including a divorce in 2014, confirmed his desire to challenge the mental health stigma. “This is my story; at some point, I needed to share it,” he said.
“The foundation’s mission is driven by my own personal experience.” It is to raise awareness about mental health, remove the stigma around it and bring awareness to the fact that physical activity really helps mental health, he said.
Korkor also had another idea.
“I wanted a flagship event for the foundation. One day I was on the treadmill in my basement. I saw a reflection in the window in front of me of a map of the United States that was behind me. I was using the 5K schedule program and could also see it on my screen. That’s how the idea was born—to organize a 5K run/walk in all 50 U.S. states in 50 consecutive days.
“I emailed a group of about 20 friends and family. The feedback ranged from ‘That’s impossible!’ to ‘Let’s do it!’ I decided to go with ‘Let’s do it!’” he said.
The Five-Fifty-Fifty Run/Walk launched in 2018. It starts every year at the end of April in either Alaska or Hawaii and ends in Wisconsin at the beginning of June. For two years, Korkor dashed across the country, participating in every run. In 2020, it was split to a combination of live and virtual events because of the pandemic and that has been the case ever since.
The live events draw between 100 and 350, depending on location. They garner media attention and bring awareness to mental health. “That’s what they are meant to do; They are not fundraisers,” he said.
Meanwhile, Korkor built a small team to run the A.B. Korkor Foundation that includes Nick Resheske of Waukesha and Zayna Salloum, who works remotely from Michigan. Resheske got to know Korkor in 2014 when Korkor served on a bank’s board and Resheske managed a branch. Since then, “I’ve worn many hats,” Resheske said.
Resheske worked in IT for Korkor’s fine art landscape photography business, and other businesses. He officially joined the foundation staff three months ago, although he has helped out with it since its inception.
Over the years, he and Korkor became friends. “I was around when he was still practicing medicine, before he sold his dialysis business and nephrology practice,” Resheske said. “When he did, he needed something else where he could help people. He always wants to help people. That’s always his goal.
“He’s big-hearted and has a great sense of humor. We have a similar sense of humor, kind of dry. We laugh a lot together,” he added.
Salloum, who leads the foundation’s marketing and community outreach, met Korkor at the 2023 Arab America conference. “I take lessons I’ve learned from him into my life every day,” Salloum said. “I’m more self-aware about how I’m doing. If I’m having a tough day, I find myself thinking, ‘Get outside. Go for a walk or a run.’ That has really stuck with me.
“It’s a pleasure learning from him. He’s also an entrepreneur and runs lots of companies at the same time he is giving back. It’s inspiring to work with him.
“Being an Arab American, where there’s so much stigma about mental health in our community, makes it powerful to watch him, a Syrian immigrant, battle that challenge. We just don’t talk enough about depression, anxiety and other serious challenges people might have. There’s no shame in it. That’s why he does what he does.
“He’ll be speaking on a panel about mental health Oct. 24 at the Arab America Summit in New Jersey. This is the first time they are doing it and perhaps the first time any Arab organization is bringing this conversation to our community. It’s something unprecedented.”
Putting Exercise into Mental Health Care
Participating in the 5K runs across the country brought Korkor in contact with many other people who, like himself, find that physical activity improves their mental health. “Yet, exercise is not part of the algorithm for mental health care. We tend to push drugs or therapy,” he said.
After delivering his TEDx Talk, Korkor decided to see what research shows. “In 2023, there were over 3,000 papers published worldwide on physical activity and mental health, many of them showing that exercise is more effective than medication in treating depression, anxiety or panic disorder.”
That discovery led Korkor to organize “a conference that brings together experts from all over the world to share what is known about how exercise, the brain and mental health interact positively with each other.” This weekend, the second annual International Motion Impacts Emotion Conference will be held in Waukesha.
At 75, Korkor still runs between three and five miles every day, he said. “This is the best time of year for me; I like to run outside.
“It feels great! There is no pill that offers what exercise does."
