Nothing Terrifies Me More Than the Stigma Against Mental Health Professionals with Mental Illness
I once made the unfortunate mistake of visiting my school’s career guidance counsellor. I told him that I wanted to become a psychologist, but that I had mental health issues, and I wanted to know if he had any advice.
He said to me, “Are you going into psychology to solve your own problems? If you are, think again.”
Needless to say, I was disappointed and offended.
I had been reflecting and pondering on that perennial question since the beginning of time. I went to him because I wanted some new insights, perhaps even some encouragement to pursue my aspiration anyway. I went to him because I needed a defense against precisely the kind of judgement he had made.
Like how a doctor can get physically ill, mental health professionals can be mentally ill too. As long as a doctor is able to manage their illness and not let it harm or interfere with their treatment of patients, there’s no problem at all. If in the case that the doctor becomes too ill to function, he gets to take a medical leave. He will nurse himself back to recuperation before resuming with his work. It is exactly the same for mental health.
A physician who had undergone a surgical procedure to remove a tumor when he was younger may be inspired to become a surgeon himself. He could be motivated out of curiosity, concern, altruism, or all of the above. As long as he is ethical and competent in his professional duties, who are we to judge which reasons for going into the profession are acceptable and which aren’t?
I’ve written previously about how wanting to go into psychotherapy for personal reasons is nothing to be ashamed of. There is no wrong in choosing a helping profession because you’ve had experience with the same distress and pain. Having been through it yourself makes you more sensitive, more empathetic, more compassionate, and makes for an excellent source of intrinsic motivation: to alleviate that same suffering for others. Because of your experience, you offer the field a unique perspective and a driving force that your peers might not possess.
It is a kiss of death (AKA fatal mistake) to make any mention of personal or familial experiences with mental health issues in one’s personal statement for psychology graduate school applications. So is displaying excessive altruism or excessive self-disclosure in these statements. In my opinion, the ones who are the most personally involved in mental health have the greatest potential to be outstanding clinicians. For sure, it works both ways, and these people might also be at greater risk of overidentifying with clients, countertransference, or burning out too quickly, but to assume that we are immediately a liability to the field because the topic of mental health hits so close to home is taking it too far. The mental illness of clinicians are only a problem insofar as they impede the clinician’s competent service to clients or their ability to care for themselves, which in turn affects their ability to care for others. Otherwise, consider individuals like Marsha Linehan, who leveraged her experience with mental illness to invent an effective, evidence-based psychotherapy.
Even in academia, self-relevant research (AKA research about a mental health topic that one has personal experience with) is frowned upon, in the fear that such personal experiences skew objectivity. The reality, fortunately or unfortunately, is that being human entails biasness, from which no researcher is exempt. The best way to deal with bias is to adhere as closely as possible to the scientific method. What admissions officers should be on the lookout for is not silly things like excessive self-disclosure, but a disregard for the scientific method.
The spirit of inquiry can be a pursuit in itself, but if you want clinicians who are determined to use that knowledge for the benefit of others, or if you are simply looking for someone who is as passionate about the outcome as they are respectful of the truth, then please, accept people like us into the mental health field. You’re damn right I want to solve my own problems. My problems are those of humanity.
