Suicidal but I just kept on at work
Dr Eleanor Checkley is an intensive care consultant in the north of England:
There’s something about being a doctor that makes you believe you’re superhuman.
That’s why it’s hard for us to seek help. Admitting you’re having mental health issues is like admitting a failure.
Being a doctor is an identity, so there’s a real fear if you think you can’t do your job.
As an intensive care consultant I was at the sharp end of the Covid deaths. I went into hero mode during the peak, working all hours.
We’re dealing with a disease which dehumanises people.
And I was the one who had to make the decision that enough’s enough, and that’s a very difficult phone call to make to families. We did the best we could. But we were not working with the right staffing and there were shortages of equipment. We only got ventilators in the May.
Once the peak was over, I started to feel very negative.
I was very shorttempered and I increasingly isolated myself from people I love. I started to want to disappear permanently, until I was having suicidal thoughts pretty much all the time.
But I didn’t want to go off sick, because I knew all my colleagues were overloaded.
A GP put me on antidepressants. I’d reached rock bottom and I was just desperate to feel better. I was off for three months but it has taken a year for me to start to feel normal. Yet I don’t feel like a failure, I feel like a survivor.
Now I have my own pandemic survival story too.
I’m seeing a lot of doctors struggling. I know of three suicides of doctors in the past six months, all anaesthetists in intensive care wards.
We hide it from our colleagues, patients and families and let it get really bad, but don’t seek help.
Just like everyone else, we need to get over the stigma of mental health, the fear that your career might be affected if you ask for help, and know that it’s OK not to be OK.