On med students and depression

I chanced upon an interesting article published by Time back in 2010 about med students and depression. It discusses a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association about how depressed med students are more likely to fear less respect from colleagues if they are diagnosed with depression. The most probable culprit? The perfectionist cut-throat environment fostered by med schools.

Click below for the article.

http://healthland.time.com/2010/09/14/why-depressed-medical-students-stigmatize-depression/

I am not sure if my stoic fits after exams would fit the DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for depression. What I do understand is the dejecting feeling of wanting to be adequate and yet completely falling off target. Med school has a way of just stripping you of whatever healthy ego you have. Most of us study and yet feel as if we understood very little. Even the sheer volume of our books is depressing by itself. Somehow though, I believe  there is no other way to become a great doctor but to go through the hard work, even if part of it means staving off our egos, and being constantly reminded of our weaknesses. Feeling let down is a part of the process, and it is often in these points that we emerge better equipped than our former selves. What I cannot subscribe to is striving for perfection for the sake of perfection, where the real and substantial purpose of becoming a doctor gets blurred in the background of esoteric knowledge, memorizing for pointless exam questions that defocuses on important learning, resorting to cheating for grades, and being reduced to 'technicians' rather than 'physicians'. I am obviously digressing here, but my point is, sometimes wrong motivations can push us to unnecessary depression and that changing our perspective and clarifying our values can be helpful in understanding our feelings about ourselves. There is nothing wrong about feeling depressed, especially in med school, but we could always use a better frame of mind about it.