What Are The Mental Health Challenges of Training To Become A Doctor?
Like “drinking water from a firehose,” medical students and physicians in training face extreme pressures and incredible workloads—with dire mental health consequences. Help us understand the pressures of medical training in the United States.
Exams at every step, hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, possibly uprooting your entire life for a residency chosen by an algorithm, 24-hour call, and a culture of perfectionism and sacrifice…
The path to becoming a practicing physician in the United States is notoriously long, expensive, and challenging. A growing body of research suggests that these youngest and newest members of the profession are at particularly high risk for burnout, depression, and suicidal ideation, with underrepresented groups facing uniqueburdens.
As part of our investigation into mental health challenges for medical students and physicians in training in the U.S., we’re trying to understand the pressures of this journey — and how the system can be improved.
We want people who have trained to become physicians in the U.S. over the last decade to tell us about their experiences. What’s the hardest part of the process? What helped you cope? How would you like to see things change?
The form below asks a few simple questions. More than anything, we’d like you to describe specific experiences and feelings: individual incidents and how they impacted you, stories that might help an outsider understand the challenges.
We may follow up with you to talk by phone, but we take your privacy preferences seriously. If you wish to remain anonymous, we can honor that request. If you aren’t comfortable filling out the form below, you can also reach us at 781-269-1635, either by calling to leave a voicemail, sending a voice memo on WhatsApp, or contacting us securely via Signal.
If you know of others who might have information for us, please send them this page, or share it on social media using #DyingToHeal. If you have other information to share, write us here or send an email to Clinic@journalism.cuny.edu. You can also learn more about our work and reach out to individual reporters here.
