General Mentioning sibling's mental health struggles in essay

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GoSpursGo

GoSpursGo

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Said sibling is a child and struggled with adolescent depression/suicidal ideation before getting on meds from undiagnosed ADHD. I thought it was ok to mention because I wasn't the one going through this. But after reading some threads here, it looks like adcoms are still skeptical about this. I'm applying TMDSAS by the way. Can I even mention this at all? I went into vivid detail too. If I can write about this, should my essay be more factual to affirm that I'm fine?

ETA: It's not an adversity prompt per se but TMDSAS' optional essay where you can write about anything. I was going to mention it because that's when my grades were bad. I wanted to explain how I was in charge of caring for my sibling's mental health because my parents couldn't handle it.
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I don’t think you should write an essay blaming bad grades on your sibling’s mental health. I don’t think it will help you.
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Personally, would try and pick something that happened to you directly. As this may have had an impact on you, you didn't really have to "rise above" this. You were taking care of your sibling as any good sibling should.
 
OK, but I guess I'm asking how do you feel that sharing this information would benefit your application?

Simply being "part of your story" isn't a good reason for including it in your application, it somehow should relate back to how it gives evidence that you would be a good doctor. Even hobbies are helpful because it shows how you are well-rounded and worldly. I just don't know how sharing your brother's mental health in vivid detail is helpful. As @TheBoneDoctah said, it just reads like you were a good brother, which is sort of a baseline that is expected.
 
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The essay has to be about you, not your sibling. How did you overcome this? What kind of grit did you display? You can't mention your grades because it would lead a screener to think "why didn't you just take a LOA?"
 
Very sorry to hear of your loss and struggles, but most of what you're telling us is what you did for your family, but not how you coped with adversity. What coping skills did you display? How did you show grit and determination.

Again, helping your family is not what the prompt is looking for.
 
Reading a little more... I think that if you decide to discuss this, the bottom line needs to be that this is something you have OVERCOME. "Ie my grades suffered as I dealt with these family issues, but I learned x, y and z and have since performed much better." I do not think you need to go into graphic detail. Just be factual. Again, the bottom line needs to not be "look at all these terrible things that happened to my family," but rather they need to understand that these events are no longer hindering you and that you are indeed ready to enter medical school. If you HAVEN'T recovered and haven't yet demonstrated a clear upward trajectory in your grades, I think it is much harder to discuss this because they will just think this will continue to hinder your performance in school.

Also keep in mind, a lot of schools have an "overcoming adversity" prompt in their secondary, so even if you don't use it in this optional essay you will have ample opportunities to use it elsewhere.
 
GoSpursGo said:
Reading a little more... I think that if you decide to discuss this, the bottom line needs to be that this is something you have OVERCOME. "Ie my grades suffered as I dealt with these family issues, but I learned x, y and z and have since performed much better." I do not think you need to go into graphic detail. Just be factual. Again, the bottom line needs to not be "look at all these terrible things that happened to my family," but rather they need to understand that these events are no longer hindering you and that you are indeed ready to enter medical school. If you HAVEN'T recovered and haven't yet demonstrated a clear upward trajectory in your grades, I think it is much harder to discuss this because they will just think this will continue to hinder your performance in school.

Also keep in mind, a lot of schools have an "overcoming adversity" prompt in their secondary, so even if you don't use it in this optional essay you will have ample opportunities to use it elsewhere.
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Agree.
 
I think I may have misunderstood grit, I thought grit would be the lengths I went to to help my sibling. Many psychiatrists would not accept our insurance or had months-long waiting lists, but I kept calling more and more doctors several times a week to find the appropriate counsel. My sibling was very resistant to treatment so I'd try again and again and again for hours using different approaches to help him relax. When you say grit, do you mean how I coped? I used the school's mental health counseling to ensure my own mental health would stay strong through this. I journaled, tried to maintain a healthy ratio of family activities to balance out the stress on the family. I knew I couldn't do this alone so I looked heavily into resources from experts.
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I apologize if I missed the point, will do my best to better answer what you're looking for! I hope this is closer to answering your questions and appreciate the help
Just to follow up, grit means how YOU handled getting hit upside the head with the 2x4 that Life sometimes applies to us.
 
I lean against as well, partly because to be cynical, you could be trying to play the emotion/pity party game. How you truly overcame this adverse circumstance is important but it's going to be tough to discuss your sibling in an interview... and anything disclosed is fair game.

Just keep that in mind if you want to discuss these circumstances as context for your essay. Hopefully your references know about this and can advise you.
 
Certainly I agree that mental health has been unappreciated in general, so I don't think it's just a weird issue with admissions. But caring for a family member versus other non-relatives is an issue of determining motivation, and I can only say it is the collective experience of faculty and practicing physicians to devalue family caregivers as professional experience.
 
There is also the issue that if you disclose it, it is fair game in the interviewing process. You have to ask yourself the Oliver Sacks question, to what extent someone else's medical situation (in a way that puts that person as officially vulnerable) is their own story versus yours? You should be aware that Oliver Sacks was roundly criticized by his colleagues for his glib descriptions of other patient's issues but an absolute refusal to discuss his own until he was outed. From what you wrote, you may find some readers deeply uncomfortable with the distancing or the rawness.

I generally advise anyone that if they are not willing to discuss a matter publicly to strangers, it should not go in a statement. In this case, would you sister be ok with the story that you choose to tell on this matter as well? I suppose if you focus on yourself, there is a grey area, but you do put her out there in a way that she may not find particularly comfortable.
 
I just really don't see why I'm being so criticized when students talk about an illness they've witnessed all the time in their statements. Maybe my point hasn't been clear enough: this isn't for my statement, I don't mention this anywhere else except for an optional essay about extenuating circumstances. The topic of interviews has come up quite frequently; honestly talking about this stuff isn't a big deal to me. I asked my brother for permission to even write this essay in the first place. My first draft might've had vivid details, but it's long been cut down to a brief description of what happened. I'm really only including this to explain my poor performance during that year, and to back up my motivations in pursuing medicine that is already established in the required parts of the app. I'm starting to recognize now that my various justifications only open me up for more misinterpretation. Still thankful for the comments, but will no longer respond since the thread is no longer actually answering my questions.
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I think you are conflating two separate issues, and we're trying to provide you insight on the committee groupthink process from our perspectives (faculty/decision-makers or administrators who observe). [I know the OP isn't going to respond anymore, and that's fine... I hope the following questions provide a basis for proper self-reflection and correction so that the poster can understand how to improve the application.]

Two things that admissions committees want from applicants germane to this discussion:
1) Your distance traveled including obstacles and challenges overcome (or mostly overcome) and how you reflect on those challenges if those clearly have placed you at a disadvantage early on in your life.

2) Your capacity for empathy and resilience in the face of handling trauma or situations where no apparent solution will "fix" the problem, especially regarding highly sensitive topics, as a future health care provider/professional. Also known as reflecting on the "kobayahi maru" to me.

How does your story fit into these buckets?

If you are double-dipping into both buckets, it will cause confusion in how one should assess your application and groupthink will likely go in the direction that disfavors you (there will always be faculty members who are cynical in one way or another regarding the two questions above).

The problem if you are trying to use the illness in bucket one is that it does not clearly tell me how you overcame this challenge, especially if it is one that has hindered you from a socioeconomic access standpoint.

If you are trying to use this illness for filing bucket two, it is a slippery slope to blur personal and non-personal observations if you are to maintain an element of professionalism.

I think we among the Expert Consultants could probably argue and debate in the context of an applicant case study, but the fact that we won't have a strong consensus will put your application lower in the "acceptable for offer" rating compared to others who have made a more clear distinction.
 
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