To hell and back

“Some mornings I'd wake up and think, ‘shall I kill myself today?’ I thought everybody made that decision before they got out of bed. It was only later that I realised that it was probably depression.”

Lizzie Miller felt like this during the eight years she worked in general surgery and neurosurgery. She didn't realise that she had been depressed since childhood. She feels: “I've always been depressed, but I assumed this was normal.” Remarkably, these symptoms didn't affect her ability to work: “I could always work. And I think this is true of a lot of doctors--the one thing that doesn't get affected is their ability to work, or is the last thing to go.”

Initially, Lizzie didn't want to go into medicine. She wanted to be an artist (and still paints), but medicine was in her genes. Her father, grandfather, and great grandfather were all doctors, so becoming an artist was inconceivable. So she trained in medicine at King's College, London, and qualified in 1980. She describes her time there as being a bit rebellious, but she had no health problems.

“I did my …