Blog Post

Dr Cathy Wield - &me anti stigma campaign  

  • by Cathy Wield
  • 17 Aug, 2017

&me is our joint campaign, with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons' Mind Matters Initiative, to encourage senior, currently well healthcare professionals including doctors, vets, dentists and pharmacists to informally self identify as having experienced a mental health condition in order to reduce the stigma of mental health in the healthcare professions.

Find out more about our campaign and how you might get involved here 

Read on to learn about our volunteer Cathy's inspiring story:

Dr Cathy Wield, emergency medicine doctor

Dr Cathy Wield has successfully returned to work in emergency medicine in the UK after two bouts of major depression which included hospital admissions and brain surgery. Cathy is passionate about speaking out and reducing the stigma around mental health. She has written extensively about her experience of being a doctor with depression (her books are Life after Darkness: A Doctor’s Journey through Severe Depression and A Thorn in my Mind: Mental Illness. Stigma and the Church) and notes that there is still room for improvement in the way that we respond to mental ill health!

 Cathy is currently exploring a new medical culture having recently moved to the U.S.

Cathy said 'It seems that recovery from mental illness is not enough. Well that’s the impression I get from our stigma filled world. It was really bad when I was suffering from depression – when you have a low self-esteem as a result of your brain chemistry, then often those who you know well, like family & friends unwittingly betray their ignorance with ill thought out advice or banal platitudes. Most of us try to do the right thing and seek advice from our general practitioner (GP) and/or various other health professionals. Even then we cannot guarantee that we will be treated with the dignity and respect that we deserve.

 I was fortunate in that respect most of the time during my illness, with the exception of some of the nursing staff during my inpatient stays and of course the various different specialities that I had the misfortune to come across after bouts of self-harm.

There is still a long way to go to eliminate not only the stigma of current mental illness, but also of the past. While I worked in A&E until August last year, I did my utmost to be open about myself and to educate my colleagues. We are whole people, the mind and body are not separate entities and we all deserve respect and care regardless of our past or present symptoms, or what brought them about. But changing attitudes takes more time than I first thought.'

Cathy tweets as @wield1and blogs here

Seeking help?

Our wonderful &Me ambassadors share their inspiring stories to provide general encouragement and to help breakdown stigma, but if you need support, please seek it from your healthcare provider or a specialist service, rather than contacting our ambassadors in person.  See our 'Support for Doctors' page for listings of various services and organisations specialising in supporting medics with mental ill health.
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