Residents with mental illness?

[Zuwie]

Have you heard about psychiatry residents or any medical residents with mental illness? Any of them achieving success? I am very interested to know.

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[kugel]

Have you heard about psychiatry residents or any medical residents with mental illness? Any of them achieving success? I am very interested to know.

Yes, and successful. But I'm not about to describe the situation, in even general terms because doing so presents too much chance that the stories could be recognized by someone on this very forum.
Confidentiality and all that.

 

[promisabel]

I don't know about "mental illness", but PDs will be kind about it. Still, residents should be careful. At some universities, they will smile about it. And then haunt you forever and hurt you. Whatever. Everyone should take care.

 

[acuriousstudent]

"Mental illness" is a broad term.

I would subdivide:

1. Chronic and almost inevitably debilitating (schizophrenia, brittle bipolar, uncontrolled and destructive substance abuse, severe personality disorder). All hard to treat, and I'd assume that med schools and residencies have interviews at least partly to (try to) avoid accepting residents with these problems.

2. Run of the mill stuff (eg, mild depression, mild substance abuse, mild pd). I'd assume that some of us go into psychiatry in order to self treat (or at least self understand), and I'd assume that one formula for professional success in any academic field would include a little extra narcissism, masochism, and hypomania.

And I think the extent to which PD's are "understanding" can be subdivided into pre match (presumably skeptical, and I wouldn't mention personal mental illness) and post match (when a decent PD would work with you on becoming the best psychiatrist you can be).