Meet Your Doctors: Dr. Ron Cobb
Note: This is the 19th story in a series about doctors in our community.
Dr. Ronald Lee Cobb, 72, provides individual and group psychotherapy in Jackson County for residents recovering from substance abuse and other problems relating to that abuse.
Dr. Cobb is a native of Santa Barbara, Calif. and is a retired colonel with the United States Army.
He received a doctor of ministry with a focus on senior adults from the San Francisco Theological Seminary. He earned a master’s degree on Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn at The University of Kansas and another master’s degree from Central Seminary on 18th century Quaker life and thought.
He is a Licensed Clinical Addiction Counselor (LCAC) and he also graduated from the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
Dr. Cobb has 46 years of experience with counseling patients suffering from drug and alcohol abuse. He’s worked in Jackson County for 14 years.
“I was inspired to become a therapist by Dr. Richard Irons, an incredible therapist at the Menninger Clinic,” Cobb said.
Dr. Cobb also is an ordained minister with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which he says plays an important role with working with recovery patients.
“I refer all my patients with medical and psychiatric needs to the fine medical doctors in Jackson County,” Cobb said. “I love watching patients learn how to stop drinking and drugging, to get in touch with their own emotions and loved ones again and then find a personal relationship with a higher power whom I call God, who loves them more than words can ever say. I have found that without spiritual recovery there is no recovery. When people have gone through the hell of addictions and have found solid recovery, they are some of the finest, most trustworthy people on this planet. I am proud to call many of them my friends.”
Cobb said he enjoys living in Jackson County for many reasons.
“We have friendly, educated neighbors and friends, agricultural roots and one of the finest county seat newspapers in Kansas, The Holton Recorder. I am amazed at its quality every time I read it,” he said.
Cobb is currently writing his fourth book, “Fun and Laughter in Recovery (Otherwise, Why Recover?).”
His other books include “Spiritual Journeys: Life, Miracles, Power, and Love 2014,” “Islam, What You Need to Know in the 21st Century, A Primer for Peace 2011” and “Memories of Bosnia, the 35th Division’s SFOR 13 NATO Peacekeeping Mission 2004.”
His wife, Kathleen, is a local artist who specializes in Kansas and Southwest landscapes.
They have two children, David, who is a school teacher at Wichita West High School, and Elizabeth, who lives in St. Louis, Mo. The Cobbs have three grandsons.
Dr. Cobb is a VFW member. He enjoys white water canoeing, writing, counseling and gardening. He has three house cats, Jeffery Cobb, Bob Cobb and Nickel Barnett and one barn cat, Callie Cobb.
Cobb said that the best piece of therapeutic advice he can give is a simple one.
“People in recovery talk about their problems while people not in recovery act out their problems,” he said.
