In honor of National Suicide Prevention Month, we are sharing stories about physician burnout to help raise awareness about this epidemic on the rise. If you’d like to submit a story, please email jpellettere@gold-foundation.org. All submissions will remain anonymous. Learn more about physician burnout and how to get involved in raising awareness.
September is National Suicide Prevention Month, and the Gold Foundation has invited GHHS (Gold Humanism Honor Society) members to share our own experiences with depression and burnout. It’s almost a universal experience, yet still somehow shrouded in shame. I truly believe that the only way for us to feel less isolated and alone in it is to share our stories with others – so I’ll start, but I hope that if this strikes a chord, you will share as well.
Depression has been part of my life for a decade now. Many times, I have thought that I could conquer it by my own strength alone, then fallen and failed. I often try to think of positive things that have come from my depression. I totally rocked psychopharmacology, for one, having taken just about every medication we learned about.
And I am sure I have gained a deeper empathy and become much more of a listener than I once was. Being a patient yourself is a powerful experience. But to be honest, more than anything, I think of depression as a waste. It’s not some transcendent force that has transformed me into a tortured artist (ha!). It’s hours and days and weeks where I could have been truly living – and wasn’t.
In my EM rotations, I first experienced that amazing feeling of finding a specialty where I would be happy to spend the rest of my life. Something else also happened. Though of course no one ever scolded me for leaving to grab lunch or dinner, usually I just worked through the whole shift, maybe grabbing a granola bar from my pocket at some point. That was just what everybody did. Then I would get home, and maybe I’d be too tired to cook much for dinner, running too late to grab breakfast. And at some point that I can’t quite pin down, eating started to feel optional. It wasn’t that I ever even thought about my body image. Food just became a low priority on that long checklist we each have for the final year of school.
Recently, I went to the doctor for an ear infection, and she instead diagnosed me with an eating disorder. She ordered a litany of tests, but I wasn’t really listening, just itching to get out of the office and unleash the barrage of self-loathing insults that were already building in my mind. I was disgusted with myself. Here I was, pretending I could take care of patients, give medical advice, when I was too lazy, too stupid to even eat enough to stay alive.
Now, when I try to find good things that have come out of this, and they spring easier to mind than those insults once did. Caring doctors found me – found me before things got worse, kept me safe. I have a whole team of people behind me, a team I never knew would be there, until I needed them myself. I’m now learning to change the unhealthy habits I’ve learned over a lifetime. I have so much hope that by the time I have an MD after my name, I will be more than just surviving, day by day. I will be whole and thriving.
When I started med school and looked at my classmates, l thought I was the only one that was barely keeping above water. I went through the motions of each day, barely (if that) fulfilling my most basic responsibilities, just hoping that if enough time passed, something would change. Meanwhile, it was obvious that all my classmates just totally had it all together. (You know the feeling. They were probably thinking the same about me.)
I’m so glad I shared, and they shared. We aren’t alone in this.
In honor of National Suicide Prevention Month, we are sharing stories about physician burnout to help raise awareness about this epidemic on the rise. If you’d like to submit a story, please email jpellettere@gold-foundation.org. All submissions will remain anonymous. Learn more about physician burnout and how to get involved in raising awareness.
If you or someone you know needs help, contact the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
