Helping ease doc worries

AN innovative Deakin University counselling program is helping equip medical students with practical mental health strategies in a bid to stem high rates of depression among doctors.

Research shows Australian doctors have higher rates of stress and more attempts at suicide than the general population, with an increased burden on those in their early stages of training.

Deakin Medical School Professor Jon Watson said students worked immensely hard while at medical school to position themselves at the top of the list for the best hospitals and most competitive specialist programs, but some cultural issues that students met in the workforce were a shock.

“We saw that earlier this year with the story of Sydney junior doctor Yumiko Kadota, who said she was left broken by a system where she worked 100 hours of overtime in one month, and was on call for 24 days straight,” he said.

“In my patch it’s all too common to see long hours, issues with bullying and poor culture. Plus, patient expectations have also grown exponentially.

“Doctors often have to deal with a number of challenging interactions in the course of their work, including … emotion, grief, anger, and loss.”

A Beyond Blue study in 2013 surveyed thousands of Australian doctors and medical students and found almost one-quarter had experienced suicidal thoughts — double the rate of the general population.

Students also perceived a stigma regarding doctors with mental health conditions.

Forty per cent of students felt doctors believed that one of their own with a mental health disorder was less competent, and a similar number felt doctors with a history of anxiety or depression were less likely to be appointed than other doctors.

Yet Prof Watson said it was estimated about one in three doctors had experienced some mental health issues.

The university’s counselling program, which includes the support of a full-time counsellor, has been expanded to include regular on-site visits to students at Deakin’s Ballarat and Geelong clinical schools.

Prof Watson said the program, which began in 2016, had seen the counsellor clock up more than 500 individual consultations with students.

He said medical students and doctors were typically selfselected as people with highstandards, high achievers and perfectionists who could be even harder on themselves than a regular person.

“Most worry, they wake up at night worried, they worry about their patients, and they worry if what they’ve done is good enough,” he said.