Studying medicine affected my mental health—here’s what I learnt

In medical school, while acquiring the knowledge I would need to be a doctor, I also picked up some bad habits. Habits like not taking time for doing the things I enjoyed, not getting enough sleep, comparing myself to others, and excessive rumination. Medical school equipped me with the skills to diagnose and treat my patients but not, as I would discover, the skills I would need to deal with the stresses of the job.

During one of my many marathon study sessions in my third year, my bleary eyes took in the diagnostic criteria for depression. It was almost an exact description of how I felt and behaved, not just for the two weeks needed to make a diagnosis, but for the past year or longer. I went cold as I read it. I thought that I was weak and wouldn’t be allowed to be a doctor if I mentioned this to anybody. I read that as a young man the thing most likely to kill me was myself. I wrote this down on flash cards and …