His unusual name is a combination of both his parents’ names – Drozda and Stoyan, famous Bulgarian psychiatrists. He was said to be a wunderkind at a very early age. When he was 4, Drozdstoy used scientific expressions in his everyday speech, most probably due to the influence of his mom and dad. No older than 5, he studied English and French simultaneously. At the age of 15 the boy graduated three different high schools at the same time. He became a university student the following year. Three years later a car accident killed his father. When he was 21, he graduated Sofia’s Medical University as a top student and at the age of 28 he was already an associate professor. At the end of 2013 the expert in psychiatry defended his professorial thesis in front of an international jury of 7, coming from the Royal Imperial College in London, the Oxford St. Catherine’s College, the Lisbon University etc. In 2015, at the age of 35 Drozdstoy was selected to become the youngest member of the alternative Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Art /BASA/. The young scientist doesn’t think fate treats him in a special manner.

We asked Prof. Stoyanov about his professional success. Here is what he told us:

“One cannot simply answer that or give some sort of a recipe! I can only say that you have to be a disciplined self-starter. One definitely needs this, in order to have any success in the sphere of higher education, as far as medicine is concerned. Initiative is needed, if you want to update your skills and knowledge in a constant manner, to see beyond the horizon. It means you should be capable of seizing things in advance, even before they actually happen and the rest of the world says the situation is too premature. Discipline is something compulsory. The pace should be gained and kept up as early as university years – this means a certain number of publications, scientific messages etc. This keeps one’s nose above the water, regarding any potential competition. Of course, one asks the question here whether they all do the same in Bulgaria’s scientific circles and the answer is a definite “no” – that is why they haven’t reached my position at this age,” the professor says.

We asked the expert about the most common disease, treated with hospitalization over the past years. He didn’t hesitate at all and answered that panic disorder was the thing. In his words “panic is the new mask of hysteria, widely spread in a monstrous scale. I think that the “great imitator” has found a new image for itself. If epilepsy was its favorite face back in the 19^th c., in the 20^th it really started to love imitating colitis, gastritis, skin diseases and heavy rashes,” the professor explains.

Aggression has recently turned into something widespread in Bulgaria. Here is what the expert says:

“I would say we should think globally and act locally in relation with this matter. Aggression, alongside other painful social issues comes as a result of the criminal negligence of politicians, who do whatever they want without any feedback from the society. Being aware of their huge power, those people use concrete situations and highlight those across the news – and this makes them criminals, in my opinion. Barely 2 – 3 minutes are left for the important and meaningful news. What choice do teenagers and elderly people have after this constant media radiation?” Prof. Stoyanov asks with real concern.

The scientist has been teaching with the Psychiatry and Medical Psychology Cathedra at Plovdiv’s Medical Faculty for a few years. The only for the Balkans Complex for Translational Neuroscience can be found there, along with the only one in Bulgaria magnetic resonance imaging apparatus, used for the early diagnosis of neurology diseases. It is also used for the optimization of treatment and the choice of medicines in psychiatry, Prof. Stoyanov explains.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev