Med Student's Boyfriend Threatens To Break Up With Her If She Won't Stop Going To Therapy — 'It'll Ruin Your Career'
Therapy should be normalized for everyone in all fields.
Dean Drobot, Polina Zimmerman, 74images / Canva A woman on Reddit is seeking relationship advice and inadvertently highlights a major issue that plagues the medical community today.
In her post to the “r/relationship_advice” subreddit, she talked about how her boyfriend threatened to break up with her and asked everyone what she should do. When people read why he was threatening to break up with her, the answer became clear.
The woman's boyfriend was threatening to break up with her if she didn’t stop going to therapy.
“I'm [a 25-year-old woman], a 4th-year med student with great grades, evals, amazing board scores. People seem to like me, and everything seems to be going great for me,” she wrote in her post. “I always listen to other people, cheer them up, motivate them, help those who are struggling, be it with med school, or life in general.”
However, things seem great until you realize they aren’t, and she revealed to people that deep down inside of her, she’s “dying.”
“I always questioned my life, but ever since I started med school, things have gotten much, much worse,” she explained. She’s become self-destructive and has recently resorted to self-harm and suicidal ideation, which is why she started therapy in the first place — but her boyfriend was not happy about that.
Photo: cottonbro studio / Pexels
“I was scared that if he realized I'm not the perfect girl he thinks I am, he'll dump me,” she wrote. “Anyway, I finally told him last night what's going on, that I signed up for therapy, and he flipped out. He said that I'm dramatizing, that everyone in med school feels this way, that I need to quit therapy because if people find out that could ruin my career. And if I don't quit therapy, he'll have to break up with me because he doesn't want to deal with all the drama.”
Not something you want to say to someone who is struggling with so much, but his sentiments reflect the very real issue that has plagued society for generations and currently plagues the medical community.
Because of his reaction, she contemplated quitting therapy and dealing with it on her own, but everyone in the comments told her that was not the right solution. “Quit him. Not your therapy,” the top comment reads, echoing the majority of opinions in this thread.
According to her update, he ended up breaking up with her anyway, but the larger issue is the stigma against mental health.
The medical education community carries a heavy stigma towards seeking mental health treatment.
This is a real experience that many medical students and even medical professionals face within their community, according to first-hand accounts revealed in a New York Times opinion article titled “Why So Many Doctors Treat Their Mental Health in Secret,” written by Dr. Seema Jilani.
The Journal of the American Medical Association published a systematic review and meta-analysis in 2015 that revealed roughly 29% of resident physicians experienced depression or depressive symptoms. In comparison, only 8% of Americans age 20 or older experience depression in any given two weeks.
Another worrying statistic shows that 16% of emergency physicians met the criteria for a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis — this number nearly doubled for frontline physicians during the height of the COVID pandemic.
Photo: Karolina Grabowska / Pexels
Compared to many other professions, doctors are at a much higher risk of suicide. It’s estimated that 300 to 400 physicians die by suicide in the US each year — a rate of around a doctor a day.
Dr. Jilani suggests that the reason behind this is how excruciatingly difficult it is for medical students to meet criteria set out for them by judicial boards. They need to be perfect, and completely fit to handle anything that is thrown at them. They worry that if they’re found to have some kind of mental health problem, they won’t be deemed fit for the role.
That’s why this woman’s boyfriend was worried about her career. Of course, this doesn’t excuse this behavior or stigma, but simply provides a necessary context surrounding the situation. The solution should be to remove this stigma and normalize therapy for everyone, even those with no mental illnesses.
If you or somebody that you know is experiencing a mental health crisis, there is a way to get help. Call SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or text "HELLO" to 741741 to be connected with the Crisis Text Line.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor for YourTango who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.