Psychiatrists suffer too | Psychology today

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Mental pain

Psychiatrists are human. They are just as vulnerable to mental pain as the rest of us. Moreover, psychiatrists must spend a large part of their professional lives listening to the suffering of others and cannot expect any respite beyond periods spent fulfilling administrative duties, which can be equally exhausting.

Additionally, psychiatrists may feel traumatized when a patient commits a crime suicide or take someone’s life. They can sometimes be held liable for a patient’s actions, which can cause many sleepless nights. They cope not only with stress at work, but also with sadness, risk, fearand everyday violence in professional life.

No wonder they suffer. Unfortunately, some of them even take their own lives. The suicide rate The percentage of mental health workers is believed to be much higher than the general population.

I was a psychiatrist for many years. I still look away and even leave the room when someone is about to commit suicide in a movie or TV drama. And I still wonder how I coped with all the pressure and all the sadness.

Compassion

A psychiatrist is not immune to a patient’s suffering. If they show sympathy, and in my experience the vast majority of them do, they will feel the patient’s pain, which is not pleasant. There were mornings when I woke up and dreamed of happier things to do, like selling flowers or planning weddings.

But compassion is an essential quality in a psychiatrist. When we are sick, we want someone competent and compassionate to treat us guardiannot only because it humanizes the healing process, but also because a doctor who can empathize will be able to better understand what is happening to us, which in turn will help him find the best medicine.

But there is a problem. Compassion is a very human thing emotion influenced by the patient’s personal and social characteristics. Compassion is believed to have developed as a result of specificity evolutionary demand for protection our own tribal relatives, is a very different task than deciding who should undergo expensive tests or be admitted to an acute bed.

Research has shown that characteristics that evoke compassion include tribal or group membership, emotional warmth, and perceived helplessness. The problem is that it’s kind of chronic psychiatric patients may be perceived as reserved or even threatening and therefore lack qualities that would naturally evoke sympathy. Therefore, these patients may potentially lose the benefits of compassionate care.

Even if we assume that a lack of compassion in such a situation would interfere with justice, it would still be undesirable and probably impossible to exclude this emotion from the psychiatrist’s interactions with patients. Psychiatrists could try to transcend their feelings of compassion by acknowledging them with intellectual skepticism while allowing for more logical and objective considerations as part of their practice. decision makingbut it is far better to actively cultivate in their minds compassion for those who are unable to arouse this feeling in others, which is itself a handicap worthy of compassion.

Unfair social image

Psychiatrists are often portrayed in the media as authoritarian agents of the state who can’t wait to lock patients up against their will and damage their brains with aggressive interventions. In fact, they desperately want to improve their patients’ health and normalize their lives as much as possible, often suffering greatly in the process.

Think about your psychiatrist if you have one.