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Hello All

 

I was wondering if any of you would be interested in reviewing this book to which my sister contributes. It has had reviews within the medical publications - BMJ Lancet etc., However, as this publication demonstrates the disempowering effect that instuitional arrangements can have within a profession as well as for its users and utilises narrative/qualitative research methods, then I believe it should be of interest to many of you on the list. She writes -

 

 

Doctors as Patients Radcliff £24.95 ISBN 1 85775 887 0 www.radcliffe-oxford.com

 

Doctors find it hard to be on the “wrong” side of the doctor-patient divide. Doctors are no more or less likely to suffer from mental illness than any other sector  of society.  Yet the culture we work in denies our right to suffer illness, especially mental illness. The Clothier Report (following the case of Beverly Allitt) recommended that people should not be employed within the NHS if they had been mentally ill in the last 2 years! This has since been amended but there remains a significant discrimination and reluctance to seek help by those within the medical profession.  Mike Shooter, Presidents of the Royal College of Psychiatrists writes in the forward to this book “is it not too much to hope that the climate of the NHS might change, from one which demands are made of doctors that they wouldn’t dream of making of their patients, to one where doctors can be patients too, without fear of what it might do to their career?”.  

 

This is a book written by users of mental health services who happen to also be doctors, expressing their unique perspective on the systems that both employ them and care for them. It is a collaborative effort by members of the Doctors Support Network – a voluntary organisation set up 7 years ago to allow doctors in distress to support each other within a non-judgemental framework.

 

Edited by Petre Jones it ties together multiple narratives, often in the form of poems and verse, followed by a qualitative analysis of the key themes and then discussion as to possible solutions.

 

The aims of the book may be many: as a resource to those doctors in need, as a political statement “we are here and we are not going to go away”. But what one is left with after reading it is a harrowing understanding of the reality of depression and its effects on individuals and their lives. A reviewer has written “it is a daunting read”. So it should be.

 

Dr A Munns

(anonymous contributor)