Physician Suicide and the Need to Talk About It (part 2 of 3 with Janae Sharp)

In the second part of our interview with Janae Sharp, she discusses why she feels she has been a different kind and less restricted voice for physician suicide awareness. She notes that it is important for physicians to speak on this issue and that there is true power in community. However, she feels physicians are more silent on this issue as they tend to avoid "unsafe" and "uncertain" topics and are ultimately afraid of the potential repercussions to their licensure. Using her background in social determinants for health, she also answers a challenging question of whether physicians "deserve" our attention and help.
TRANSCRIPT
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David Carreon: I think there is a lot of bravery in approaching this topic no matter where you come from or what your background is and I think that especially so, when some people might say that this is kind of a intramural problem, that this is a physician problem and physicians need to deal with it. Or maybe alternatively that this is a health care problem and so physicians need to deal with it. What would you say to that perspective? Are you, you said you've been silenced, but should this be something that is only for physicians to talk about?
Janae Sharp: The difficult thing about having physicians be the only people who talk about it is that a physician has a direct financial impact in their lives by this topic. If you have a serious mental illness as a physician, that can mean you lose your job. If you have a financial incentive as a health care system to not employ a physician with a mental illness, what does that mean in terms of disability rights and what does that mean in terms of our ability?
So I think physicians know a lot. I think they're super accomplished and I think they really value academics and I really like that they want things that are validated, I like the healing belief. I also think they don't have the freedom that the system, the system isn't designed for them to criticize itself. It's designed for them to perform. Or not perform.
So someone like me, it had the biggest direct financial impact as like the loss of the, you know the loss of all that medical school and all that training directly impacted my kids financially, obviously, and I had a bigger loss than a specific physician would have. I mean not a physician that's losing their job, or passing away, but those voices are sometimes lost and the people in the conversation can't, they aren't as unfettered as we want to, we need them to be to make honest decisions and discuss that honestly.
Jessi Gold: But you feel less limited by external forces, because it's your life and your story not some story controlled by their job?
Janae Sharp: Yes. Like this is something where I don't have to put it on my licensure, my complete mental health history, which I think in 29 states they ask you to do that, even in your renewal. I don't have to report to my employer. When you've already had a suicide loss, there's nothing to do lose anymore. And physicians want that stability and they want that safety that they've confined in academic medicine and within knowing what's right and wrong, but this isn't a safe topic.
So I think it's important for people like me, to be there and say, "Yeah, but, you guys are saying all this stuff." Even when you talk about it sometimes, it's like an alternate universe. They talk about it as if physicians are all saints or all so sad, instead of they're really just human, you know. Some of them are jerks. Some of them that you work with, you don't like and you can talk to nurses and doctors about that. So maybe it needs more sarcasm.
David Carreon: Oh, I don't know if I've ever met a nurse or doctor that I don't like.
Janae Sharp: Never. Never. I've never, I've literally never met an unreasonable either and neither have you.
Jessi Gold: It's just like, you know, it's the same. Like there's sad ones, there are happy ones, there are people who get better, there are people who don't. It's the same.
Janae Sharp: Right. Yeah. Like everyone knows that one guy who they just didn't like, and like how when we're talking about mental health and when we're talking about a healthy system, we need to separate those two. So it's not just like that one selfish guy who thought he was the best person ever, now he's talking about how he's the best person ever with mental health, and he's going to make things better for everybody if you were just more like him. You know? Because that's a little off putting.
Jessi Gold: Yeah.
Janae Sharp: Yeah. So I think it's, I actually think it gives me more freedom, because I can say things like, "Yeah, but it was shocking to me how much some of the people that I've met in medicine do coke, or other performance enhancing drugs...