Many Psychiatrists Wouldn’t Disclose a Mental Illness

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In a survey of 487 psychiatrists in the Canadian province of Ontario, nearly a third said that they had experienced being mentally ill themselves. And if they developed a mental disorder, only 42% would disclose it to family or friends.

Stigma, along with “career implications and impact on professional standing were other top factors cited by psychiatrists as reasons for nondisclosure,” reports Psychiatry Advisor. Over a quarter of the psychiatrists also had “concerns about quality of care.”

Stigma Influences Psychiatrists in Disclosing Their Own Mental Illness (Psychiatry Advisor, May 18, 2015)

5 COMMENTS

  1. This study confirms what has been my observation about psychiatrists all along: that as a group they tend to be more unbalanced than people of other professions. This helps account for some of their defective reasoning that is so common amongst them.

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  3. My theory is people tend to choose a major or specialty, based upon their own interests or concerns. I thought psych was fascinating in college, but had no psychological problems personally. And I was intelligent enough to realize it’d be depressing listening to others problems all day long, every day, so I didn’t choose that as a field of study.

    Therefore, it strikes me, and this was my personal experience with psychiatric practitioners, too. That those who go into the field likely do so to learn about their own personal issues, thus most likely do have “mental health” issues. And they are those without the foresight to understand listening to others problems all day is a depressing job. And, given the history of the field of psychiatry, the psychopaths do seem drawn towards the “mental health” field.

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    • The only problem with what you state is that for the past 30 to 40 years psychiatrist have not listened to the so-called “patients”. Almost none of them know how to do any kind of talk therapy at all and if people do try to talk with them about their problems or issues the psychiatrists become uncomfortable and cut the visit short or even tell people that what they’re talking about has absolutely nothing to do with their problems or issues!

      The problem is that they do realize that it can be difficult to listen to people in distress and dis-ease. They want nothing at all to do with any of it because if you listen to others talk about such things your own “stuff”, which you haven’t worked on, bubbles to the surface and demands to be looked at. The end result is that it’s all very disturbing and uncomfortable. They don’t want to be uncomfortable and they keep people from doing any talking. This is why I believe that the ones who choose psychiatry do so. They are people who aren’t in touch with their own “stuff” that needs working on and they keep their issues from being raised by drugging those who would make their issues rise to the surface. This is why the toxic drugs were such a great thing for them. They don’t need to listen to anyone, they have the drugs to keep people quiet and docile.

      I don’t think that I’ve really made myself clear but my point I is that they choose psychiatry in the first place because they realize that with the drugs they can control people and keep them from ever making the psychiatrist herself/himself uncomfortable and they never have to deal with their stuff. I don’t think that most of them are consciously aware of all this but it happens just the same.

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