There are many things you will go through as you train to become a psychiatrist. Here are some examples.
You will be subject to racial abuse on a regular basis without so much as a raised eyebrow from those around you. This will just become a method of daily communication.
Your body will start to tense as you walk through the hospital doors every morning, knowing that nothing you do or say will protect you from the onslaught of abuse that has become a staple of your work life.
Personal space will become a myth. You will have faces just centimetres away from your own, feeling the breath over your own petrified skin, seeing eyes bulging in anger directed right into your soul, jaws clenched, veins bulging, hatred filling every muscle of that body in front of you. That face will dog your mind even after you have been ‘rescued’ by a nurse whose communication skills are far better than your own. What better way to start the day than to know that you are despised.
And Covid-19 has added another ingredient into the mix. Rather than merely being shouted and screamed at, intimidated and threatened, rather than just being racially abused and personal insults throwing daggers at your self-esteem, you will also become the dartboard of spit from those who have tested positive for the virus if they are feeling particularly annoyed that day.
But you know what’s the worst thing in all of this? It’s not the countless patients who have had to wait until crisis hits before anyone is able to help, or the ones who have had their life taken away with three pieces of paper and a lasting memory of how mental health services have treated them.
It’s the fact that you’re not supposed to talk about these things in the first place. It’s the fact that this is ‘just part of the job’ and something you get on with because you are a professional who knows ‘they don’t really mean it.’ It’s the fact that avenues where such difficulties should be explored – weekly supervision, psychotherapy groups – turn into awkward meetings with fifteen strangers in a room, being told that such stories are not ‘relevant’ to the otherwise sacred halls of holistic psychiatry.
It’s the fact that no one cares.
