06/07/2023
We are beyond excited to share our Owner & CEO, Carly Krespan’s, June 6, 2023 commentary article, now published in the Wiley journal “Medical Education”
In this piece, Carly shares her personal experiences as a medical student who has been dismissed from medical school due to mental illness, yet she continues to navigate a medical career and education with new boundaries. This experience has led her to reflect on the stigma of mental illness and how it affects medical students, trainees, and physicians.
Medical education is stressful by design, and physicians have the highest rates of su***de of any profession. Yet, there seems to be little support for medical students who seek mental health resources. Instead, they are met with discrimination from the field. The recent embrace of less severe forms of mental health has almost been more isolating for those, like Carly, at the more extreme poles of these disabilities.
Carly argues that this stigma is unfair and that physicians with mental health conditions should be able to practice medicine as long as they are aware of when they need treatment, request time away from patients appropriately, and receive the care they need for their own safety and safety of those around them.
Carly hopes that this piece will encourage more discussion about the expectations we have for the mental health of medical professionals, as well as more support for those who struggle with mental illness in medical education and practice.
