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:
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
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.
Dr Louise Freeman addresses barriers to access to work faced by medics with mental ill health needing reasonable adjustments.
Dr Louise Freeman is the co-chair of the Doctors' Support Network. Here, she talks about why prioritising your own health can feel difficult in times of crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr Serena Haywood on talking about her experience of mental ill health: 'The fear and isolation ... led me to take the risky decision to start talking about my mental health as much as I could to as many people as would listen. I was advised not to but did it anyway. And my life changed from there.'
Psychologist Caroline Elton discusses the difficult issue of talking about our own mental ill health. 'I don’t want to collude with the fantasy that depression, or any other mental illness, only happens to other people. It has certainly happened to me. '
CLANGERS, keeping well for medics, specialist support and creativity were all on the programme at our recent conference in Bristol.
Dr Cathy Wield discusses how and when to talk about our recovery from mental ill health.
DSN co-chairs, Dr Louise Freeman and Dr Angelika Luehrs, discuss how and why we are talking about our own mental health as doctors, including an explanation of our AndMe anti stigma campaign with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons' Mind Matters Initiative.
Dr Cathy Wield discusses how we often shy away from naming physician mental health by using the term 'physician health'.
BBC Radio Five Live discussion about Prof. Steve Robson's article recounting his experience of attempting suicide as a trainee doctor with comment from his colleague Dr Kate Tree and an interview with Dr Laura McGregor, consultant in emergency medicine
Clare Gerada: ' We can't keep photographing the problem (physician health) - we need to do something about it.'
