Title: 'Doctors can't be depressed' | The Independent | The Independent
Headings: 'Doctors can't be depressed'
'Doctors can't be depressed'
What happens when a medic has a mental health problem? Dr Liz Miller found out the hard way
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Content: There is a sense that you have let the side down. When a doctor falls ill, the medical profession closes ranks and goes into collective denial. "Doctors are brought up to think that they are different from patients. You have to believe you are not going to catch the diseases you are treating. It was part of the macho attitude in medicine – the attitude that a doctor who fell ill had breached a tradition, fallen from grace. It simply wasn't done." Dr Miller's illness, manic depression (now known as bipolar disorder), struck in her late 20s and has shaped her life. But what has shaped her career was the way the medical profession responded to her illness – with incomprehension followed by rejection and denial. She responded by setting up the Doctors' Support Network for others in her position, and by writing a book – a guide to avoiding mental illness without the help of doctors, by noting your feelings and acting on them – something she says the medical profession signally failed to do for her. " If they had been nice to me, I need not have done any of this.