Wednesday, June 13, 2012
today i shall blog about depression and suicide in students haha. I've been hearing quite a bit of things about it, so i decided to do some reading myself, since i'm kinda free, and because the topic is pretty interesting and relevant. Also, i wanna see if i'm still capable of critical thinking and argumentative logic, hehe (: just to make sure my brain isn't completely chock-full of plaster of paris and denture base resin yet hahaha :p
basically, i've been hearing stuff like "dentists are one of the professions with the highest suicide rate in the world", not just from friends, but also from some assessors. And i'm thinking, that is one hell of a dangerous statement to make. I don't personally know of any dentists who committed suicide, although i did hear of one final year NUS dental student jumping off a building some years back. Apparently the reason for most suicides in these cases are the high stress levels we encounter in our jobs? and apparently dentists are very vulnerable to depression, as are most people in medicine and law. haha i don't know if this depression is again related to stress or what, but it's kinda worrying i feel.
and I'll admit that most of the time i'm really depressed, and some days i do have suicidal thoughts lol, but i also know (at least, at this point of time) that i will not really off myself, cause i feel that there's still some things to live for, no matter how little, but they still exist. haha.
the thing is that, all these people who are committing suicide here and there, do they really have nothing whatsoever to live for? What really drives them to commit suicide?
I'm quoting this off a website: "An article published in the
Journal of the Canadian Dental Association
claims that many dentists are at risk of suffering from a chronic mood
disorder known as dysthymia. It's a condition the Université de Montréal
Department of Dentistry is fighting - preventively.
Dysthymia is characterized by
loss
of appetite, low levels of energy, desperation, excessive anger, social
withdrawal and working long hours to compensate for declining
performance, troubles in concentration, guilt and suicidal thoughts."
There was also this longitudinal study done on dental students from Newcastle, which is too lengthy to quote here, but basically it found that dental students drink and smoke and abuse drugs, at dangerously high levels throughout dental school, but this dropped once they graduated and became practising dentists.
I think i should be reading more studies, but i'm lazy haha. but anyway the above 2 studies just mention that dentists are at risk of depression and substance abuse blah blah, prob due to stress.
Now, to draw the link between stress, depression and suicide.
There's this forum on yahoo answers, haha lots of interesting answers there. Some people attribute it to the mercury in the amalgams that we use.I'm not very sure about this, but in Singapore at least, amalgams are supposed to be safe, cos the mercury content is not really dangerously high. Plus mercury has to be in the vapour form, for it to really get absorbed into our neurons, but we're wearing masks most of the time, so i think that kind of limits the amount of mercury vapour entering our brain already, thankfully haha (:
and also, some patients really really hate us, cos "we cause so much
pain" (WTH? if you had taken care of your own teeth in the first place,
you'd only need a simple scaling and polishing which is relatively pain
free i assure you. ) and we sometimes are on the receiving end of
comments like "I really hate the dentist." or "I really rather not be
here". haha k so apparently that makes dentists pretty depressed in the
long run. Well honestly, I speak for myself when i say that such
comments from patients prob wouldn't affect me so much, because it's
just their problem, and I'm not really gonna care if you hate me or
what, I'm just gonna do my job right, and then you can go. well, but
then again, maybe that's easier said than done la. I haven't personally
come across any such patients, and right now, all of patients that i'm
seeing in school are really sweet and understanding.
Some people say that we are not appreciated by society in general, and like, we've studied medical subjects in sch and earned the title "Dr" but most people would still scoff at it, cos we're ultimately not medical doctors per se, and medical doctors still tend to be held in higher esteem then dentists. I think that's a pretty olden-day sort of logic, because in today's society, I would like to believe that dentists are given pretty much the same amount of respect as medical doctors? At least this is so in the Scandinavian countries, and in Canada and Europe. I don't know if this is the case in States. In Singapore, sadly I think most people still believe that it is more prestigious to be a medical doctor than a dentist. I don't think it's fair to compare professions like that la honestly, cos we all have our merits and we're all still serving society ultimately. It's not fair to say that we should be accorded a lower level of respect simply because we don't save lives and we earn more money than medical doctors(??? I put many question marks there, because this is really debatable, as it ultimately depends on where you decide to work in future, and whether you specialise, and what you specialise in, etc.) And i'll say that even if we earn more money than the average doctor, please think of the sacrifice we have to make when our eyesight and hearing goes prematurely, and our spines deteriorate, all from doing the lowly work that we always do, while trying to cause pain to our patients, yeah. So basically, I'll have you know that if you catch me when i'm in an angsty mood(which is very often these days) and try to tell me that dentists are not as respectable as medical doctors, you're definitely gonna earn yourself a slap in the face.
Some people have also suggested that the stress also comes from being overly perfectionist, since most dentists are apparently very perfectionistic people with type A personalities, and love being in control of everything. But because we're dealing with humans in our practice, not everything is within our control sometimes, and so when a case is not resolved just the way we want it to be, we get all upset and cranky and create additional stress on ourselves. Hmmm. that actually sounds pretty plausible to me. I'd like to mention first though, that there are also some dentists who are not very perfectionist( e.g. me) so prob in their case, the stress would come from others expecting you to be perfectionist, and expecting you to resolve the case perfectly. Or like when it comes to lab work, expecting every freaking thing to be perfect, yeah. well i can definitely see where the stress comes in here!!
Also, it's apparently true that dental students are more stressed out than graduated dentists. haha it's prob the school that kills us. heh this is something i've heard about also, anw. cos like, everyone says that dental sch sucks, but life after dental sch gets better (: well, i can't wait to graduate! (: 2 more years hehe xD
Also, apparently, dental school is one of the toughest things people can ever go through. (This is something that most graduated dentists say, so I'm guessing there's prob quite a lot of truth in that statement). Someone said that dental school is always making people feel inadequate most of the time (how true! ) and tired and stressed out, what with the crazy requirements and lack of time, and the constant need to rush all our work. Hmm. well then i guess it's not only in Singapore that dental sch sucks ttm then. Apparently some dental schools in UK require their students to do their own labwork too! (: oh joy haha, that makes me feel a tad better (:
There were also other reasons for suicide, but not very common. E.g. OMG, some dentist committed suicide cos he had chronic backache from his job, which made him really depressed all the time (guess the pain was really unbearable). omg right. I can't identify with that right now, as in, i have chronic backache too, but the pain is bearable, and i can't ever imagine wanting to commit suicide cos of that. poor guy seriously. k i must really take care of my back ):
One thing i learnt from reading all these articles online: It's important to take breaks to counter the stress and depression. The thing is that, this is really really easier said than done. We don't have the luxury of taking breaks because there's always always some work to be done, whether it is labwork, or catching up on technique work, or reading up on patient files, inking up charting forms, writing treatment plans, yada yada (i'm just listing the stuff that I find myself doing during lunch or early in the morning before sch starts) and even studying for tests sometimes D: basically, we don't get enough time for proper breaks! D: but yeah i agree that if we could actually manage to take a break every once in a while, it would do our mental health some good (: which is why i like to schedule meetups with friends sometimes in the middle of a crazy week haha, cos i know it'll definitely do me some good. The downside of this: extreme fatigue the next morning hahaha, which is combatted with like 3 cups of coffee (on bad days) and then followed by insomnia at night, and the caffeine cycle continues. lol.
Well i'm tired of reading all these articles already, so i'm just gonna stop here, even though I haven't reached any conclusive statement on the topic at hand hahaha. Let's just say that i can see where some of these suicidal and depressed people are coming from (not just that, I can really empathise with them sometimes) but well, there's always the light at the end of the tunnel (graduation! ) that we should totally look forward to, and maybe life would get better from there (:
I do think that i am really suffering from some degree of dysthymia, however, but i think it's not really critical at the moment, so i'm just gonna leave things be. I'm assuming that if the time comes when i get really really critically depressed/suicidal, someone will notice soon enough to save me. haha if not, then i guess it would have been a good idea for me to off myself anyway. heh. :D
another important message: TAKE BREAKS WHENEVER YOU CAN, PEOPLE! (:
