Should I still be a psychiatrist? Family history of mental illness?!
Question: I was wondering if I should still plan on being a psychiatrist (only in high school) considering my family has a history of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and OCD. I have OCD right now and am worried it would bother me too much, do you think it would? I get VERY sad when I see people hurting, do you think I should still go for it?
Answers: I was wondering if I should still plan on being a psychiatrist (only in high school) considering my family has a history of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and OCD. I have OCD right now and am worried it would bother me too much, do you think it would? I get VERY sad when I see people hurting, do you think I should still go for it?
Hell yes, man. You will understand better than ANYone what your clients are going through. I would much rather have a psychiatrist who had experience like that than one who only pretended to understand what I was going through.
Yes, not only do you already have experience but you have a heart and we mental health sufferers need to see that our doctors are humans as well.. Just your concern, gives your self the answer.. Good Luck
I wish that I could be a psychiatrist to be honest, but even doing medicine will be hard for me due to the section 2 that I was on.
You should do it. You would be amazing. You wouldn't be one of those judgemental, stereotyping, totalitarian imbeciles that quite a few psychiatrists are these days.
I don't mean to be the person to discourage you from following your dream, but I would worry for you. You say that you get sad when you see someone hurting. That would be what you would be doing every single day all day long. You don't want your career to be detrimental to your own life and mental health. Maybe you could consider a career doing research on mental illness, so you are still making a meaningful contribution, but you aren't constantly in contact with people who are struggling.
Of course you should be a psychiatrist if that is what you are interested in doing. I know several who became psychiatrists because of their families disorders (or their own!) because they really understood the pain and struggle families and persons with MI go through. If you feel others pain too much, they do teach techniques on how to handle your sensitivity in medical school. It is far better to try than to spend the rest of your life saying what if? If you keep in touch with your own doctor/therapist and control your own disorder you can do whatever you want.
Depending on your age, and maturity level and the way you can deal with all of the issues.
Go for it! As others have said, you will have insight into patients' problems and a capacity for empathy. However, your sensitivity does mean that you could suffer easy burn-out if you don't do some really thorough personal work. So - I would make sure you are in psychotherapy throughout your training, just as a psychotherapist would be required to be. This will help you work through things as they come up - including your sadness when you see people hurting which, as someone else has said, is what you'll be dealing with every day. It really is possible, through therapy, to retain your capacity for empathy but be able to keep feeling OK in yourself. If you can get to that place, you'll be a brilliant psychiatrist.
So my fear would be, if you don't do the psychotherapy, you will either be broken by the painfulness of the work OR will become hard and blocked-off from your feelings. But if you do the psychotherapeutic work - very good luck!!
Sure, why not? You would actually understand what some people are going through, and you seem like you care a lot about people. I would just make sure that you can find a way to handle seeing people who are hurting or going through a tough time, because like other people said, you will be seeing them every day.
It's a very tricky balancing act between feeling the necessary empathy for one's patients/clients and yet remaining sufficiently detached that helping them won't destroy your own mental health. You have to have a certain clinical objectivity in order to help other people.
As charming and romantic an idea as it is to consider being a psychiatrist, the fact that you, "...get VERY sad when I see people hurting..." makes that necessary professional detachment virtually impossible.
However, that does not mean you should abandon your dreams of becoming a mental health therapist, just understand that it will take a whole bunch more than acquiring the necessary academic credentials to do it. That means getting the necessary psychiatric help yourself and STICKING TO IT!
This lesson was practically beaten into us when I was in school learning to be a counsellor.
YES. You would make a wonderful doctor.
I think you would be very happy to know how many lives you touched or even SAVED.