Physicians face a crisis: state medical boards may penalize doctors who disclose mental illness or suicidal thoughts, discouraging them from seeking help. Dr. Carrie Cunningham, a surgeon and former Association of Academic Surgery president, went public about her own substance abuse after a colleague's suicide, calling for mental-health initiatives to break the culture of silence.
Suicide in our industry is not being talked about enough. There's not enough resources available. In many states, the medical boards will view you negatively if you admit that you are having mental illness issues or suicidal thoughts. This is not a topic that a lot of people want to talk about. Why? Well, you are trained to be superhuman, right? You are trained not to make mistakes. That's actually one of the biggest challenges that we face with doctors as they make this transition into being in having their own business is you're trained to not make mistakes and you're trained to basically bury your emotions. Okay, my first wife was an ER nurse and to watch the transformation of her and burying her emotions even deeper after working in the ER for 5 and a half, 6 years was astounding. Because you can't confront them, right? And these things just get buried deeper and deeper and eventually they're going to come up and bite you in the— In the keister. So I want to talk about Dr. Carrie Cunningham. And Dr. Carrie Cunningham is a surgeon. She's actually also a former professional tennis player. She has served as president for the Association of Academic Surgery. Now, I'm working on getting an interview set up with her. If anybody has a contact, it'd be great. I'd love to talk to her and interview this. But her speech that she gave at her association's annual conference in 2023 candidly shared her personal battle with and substance abuse as the need for initiatives to help those in the medical field with mental health issues and suicide within the profession. And as her story goes, one of her friends who was highly respected surgeon took their own life. The medical boards will view you negatively if you admit that you are having mental illness issues or suicidal thoughts. I have heard stories. I don't know of any directly, but I have heard stories through networks of doctors having their license suspended because they said that they had suicidal thoughts. Now, I don't know the context of this. This is— I don't have a specific case to give you. Right. So please understand that that's, you know, coming from directly from my client sharing it with, you know, friends of theirs. Okay.
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