Why doctors hide their own illnesses

Sunday, June 22, 2014 SPORK! 0 Comments

It was the summer of 2012 when Simon, then a 37-year-old anaesthetist, found himself one morning drunk and sobbing in a London pub. Questions filled his head, foggy with booze: "How did it come to this? How did I throw it all away?"
  • The Guardian, 

  • A letter from the General Medical Council lay in his lap. He'd been convicted of drink-driving and was now suspended from being a doctor. Simon was an alcoholic, drinking as much as 30 units every day. Faced with the wreckage of his career, he was suicidal.
The year before, Simon (not his real name) had been breathalysing himself before he went to work at the hospital, terrified he'd kill somebody in theatre. Unable to cope with the stress of his double life (and because, paradoxically, he was a good doctor), he had resigned from his job before he could hurt a patient. He had given in to his addiction, been prosecuted for driving under the influence, been ordered before the GMC and had left the profession he loved and for which he had once had a natural talent.
Simon was brought to rock bottom by a combination of personal factors: the break-up of his marriage; his mother's cancer; geographical dislocation from his family; his own self-loathing and need to achieve; and a pattern of heavy drinking which had started at medical school in order to fit in and cope with stress. "I went to a grammar school and had always worked hard. I walked into medical school," he says. "But I was shy and I immediately saw that if I drank heavily, it could feel like I fitted in more." When his life derailed, he drank rather than ask for help. What characterised this period of his life was fear: fear of failing; fear of his drinking being found out; fear of losing his job and being stigmatised.
"There was this immense sense of loss," he remembers of that morning in London. "That it was all gone, and that I'd never get it back."
David Emson lives daily with the reality of loss. His wife, Daksha, a brilliant young London-based psychiatrist, suffered from bipolar affective disorder. Her fear of the stigma attached to mental health problems ended in tragedy. Known as one of the brightest young psychiatrists of her year and on course to be made a consultant, Daksha was terrified that if it was discovered, her illness would cost her her job.
Read the full article at the Guardian 
(http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/16/why-doctors-hide-their-own-illnesses)

SPORK! Similar Picks:

> The Future of People with Severe Mental Illnesses is in the Wrong Hands

0 comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)