Training to be a doctor requires long, stressful hours, sleepless nights and a high chance of depression and suicidal thoughts, but often you are too stoic and time-consumed to ask for help. A study suggests that online self-help behavior therapy could be a great help.
Suicidal thoughts were less common in new doctors who did at least four half-hour online sessions before starting their first year of training, than those who didn't do the therapy at all. The study included about 200 medical interns, medical trainees in their first post-graduate year, which is usually one of the most intense time of doctor training. It often consists of 80-hour weeks and overnight hospital shifts dealing with multiple medical issues.
An earlier research of Dr. Constance Guille, the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, involved 740 interns found that suicidal tendencies rose almost four-fold during the first three months of residency. Sarah Dalechek, a first-year psychiatry resident at the same university, said her program requires two month-long rotations of 16-hour overnight shifts in an emergency room. She added that she became very depressed but had little to no time to seek help.
Dalechek described it as a very stressful situation because you're deprived of sleep, you can't eat right but have to work back-to-back shifts and you're trying to catch up on sleep but you can't. She was not involved in the study though. Dalechek also said she had decided to see a therapist at one point but would have chosen a web-based program because it's confidential and does not require an appointment. Fortunately, her depression died down when that particular rotation ended.
Guille said having a web-based therapy normally to medical residents could be useful, if the results of her research are confirmed in a wider study. The online program consists of sessions on how to put feelings of stress or despair into perspective. The training also stimulates seeking out activities or thoughts that give pleasure, especially when feeling down. Past research has shown advantage from a similar web-based therapy in other settings.
