Mental Health Collage

As a medical student, and aspiring healthcare professional, I am honoured to be in a position that allows people to feel comfortable confiding in me and to be vulnerable.

Hearing patients speak about their struggle to access and receive mental health support strongly resonate with me because of my own experiences with mental illnesses, and I feel like I could relate to their possible feelings of being abandoned by the healthcare system due to the flaws in mental health services. These include the annual funding cuts that severely restrict the services, the long waitlists, the disconnect and lack of communication between various services/systems regarding patient care, and the lack of staff diversity. These issues render it nearly impossible to meet the needs of those who require mental health support before it is too late.

In addition to these systemic weaknesses, society’s discomfort at discussing mental health is another barrier that prevents people from seeking the help that they need. I wanted to reflect this in my creative piece using the image of sunglasses bearing the words ‘stigma’ on each lens as a literal depiction of people’s view of mental health being blinded by stigma, myself included. I frequently find that I am somewhat embarrassed to discuss my mental health with others, including healthcare professionals, and when I think about the patients that confide in me about their struggles with mental illness I am in awe of her courage. As a future healthcare professional, I would like to help build an environment in which people feel comfortable talking about their mental health without the fear of being judged, ridiculed, or not being taken seriously. By challenging the stigma surrounding mental health it may be possible to provide early support to those who need it.

Being a patient as well as a medical student has offered me a unique perspective into how mental health is treated. As a patient, I am encouraged to talk about my mental health and told that there is nothing to be ashamed of, but as a medical student, it seems that I can never be viewed as a patient because we are supposed to be carers that help others, rather than those who seek help themselves. I noticed this particularly when I tried confiding in my friend about my mental health struggles, and they unknowingly made light of the issues and gave advice and suggestions that they would never give a patient. It seems easier to give appropriate advice when patients are strangers rather than someone you personally know, but medical students and healthcare professionals are not immune to mental illnesses themselves. Healthcare professionals are susceptible to illness just like anyone else, and I hope that in my career I will be able to comfort my colleagues and be there to support them when they need it rather than place the unrealistic expectation that they are unaffected by illness due to their career. The idea of painting healthcare professionals as resilient heroes that are impervious to illness is increasingly evident during the COVID pandemic, in which healthcare professionals are overworked, and although this is taking a toll on their mental health they are expected to push through it all rather than take into account their own mental health. I wanted to illustrate this in my creative piece, which is why I used a picture of a doctor on the floor being comforted by a colleague during the pandemic.

Nevertheless, there is increasing awareness of the importance of mental health and I am hopeful that by adding my voice to the conversation that I will be able to play a role in providing better healthcare. I wanted to portray the potential for improving mental health services in my creative piece using the image of a flower to draw attention to the importance of healthcare professionals growing and flourishing in the future. I have already started using social media to raise awareness of the importance of mental health, but I am hopeful that meeting more patients and listening to their stories will shape my approach to ensure that I am better equipped to accommodate their needs.