Yesterday was probably the most depressing day in a long time and for once it wasn’t all about me. The Meharry “Family” lost a member but it was more than that.
The 800 pound gorilla in the room was awoken in a big way, and yet, I think he remains unnoticed by those who desperately need to see him. To borrow from another parable, it’s like the blind man and the elephant, the problem is alot bigger than they think it is, they just can’t see it.
Depression is real, and medical students get depressed, I speak from experience. I’ve been lucky enough to have had a few lucky breaks along the way, and still, I’ve had my moments where I’ve wanted to just drop everything and create a whole new life for myself. Suicide was never an option for me, but it is one for others. We need to stop acting like our problems are simple and we should just “man up” and get over them. It’s not that simple, we are talking about people who are locked into a career, people who have invested time at the peak of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are some who treat that investment like a whim, who distribute grades and recommendations as if there is not a human being affected by it.
Some people say that a physician should “have tougher skin” and “if they can’t handle rejection/failure they are in the wrong field”. Nothing could be further from the truth. A physician SHOULD be a gentle and sensitive soul. Who else can deal with people at their weakest and lowest points with the compassion and empathy they deserve. Who would want a cold, calculating, and callous doctor working on their case? Surely not me. How can we then say that we should be able to cope with potentially life altering situations like failing classes and major exams by ourselves, to just work them through? This is not to say there are not empathetic individuals here at the college because there are, and I have relied on them in the past, but systematically we have been shown in the most egregious manner that they are not the norm!
On another note, I want to talk about the foolhardy notion that black men don’t kill themselves. I’ve seen first hand in the past 4 years that the myth of suicide being a white person’s phenomenon couldn’t be further from the truth. Suicide is a HUMAN problem. We have to get over the taboo and talk about it. We have got to swallow our pride and learn to TALK to people about our problems. We need to learn not to put up with inferiority because it’s what we are used to. We need to complain more and more importantly act on our complaints.
We all hurt….I thought it was ironic when I came home yesterday from that draining ordeal, that the R.E.M. song I referenced in the title was playing. We’re all hurting right now, but now more than ever we need to hold on.
