I never realised that I was mentally ill.

I am now on my first clinical placement on junior rotation, in psychiatry. My only other experience in mental health was in 1993 as a student nurse, when I was placed in a "drop in" day centre (Couldn't believe how many fags a group of people could get through). I think it is fair to say that until this week, my views of mental illness were archaic - mental illness happened to strange people who then went on to do very strange things.

I started this week by sitting in on an outpatient clinic with my psychiatrist. Most of the visiting patients were in various stages of depression and I made the mistake of commenting that I had never thought of depressed people as being mentally ill. I was depressed after my dad had his stroke a few years ago and ended up on six weeks of Citalopram. I knew I was depressed, but never for one moment thought of myself as being mentally ill!

I have always thought of mentally ill people as psychotic nutters (I had an altercation with a paranoid schizophrenic once that is probably to blame) but what I have learnt immediately, is that mental illness happens to normal people. It seems that you can be perfectly well one day and then wake up the next hearing voices and seeing little men running around the room. The latter are called "Lilliputian hallucinations" I love that name!

I also never knew that ECT was still a treatment and never knew that giving an anti-psychotic drug can stop the voices in Schizophrenia. That amazes me - how can a drug stop voices in your head? Apparently the voices start when too much dopamine flies around your brain, so drugs are given which bind dopamine receptors and when most of the receptors are bound, the voices stop. Brilliant.

My consultant has given me a DVD of "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" to watch this weekend. It looks a bit depressing but I think I had better keep in his good books after the "Depressed people aren't mentally ill" comment

Not many people fail in medical school

Hello!

Hells bells - can't believe it has been a year. Thank you very much to those of you who have emailed me to ask how I am getting on.


Well - to bring you up to date - I am now half way though my second year which is unbelievable. I have (Just this week) started my clinical training in my first junior rotation in psychiatry. It has been an absolute slog to get here and I think that this is why I stopped writing these posts. The other reason was that I didn't pass everything that I needed to pass and so ended up in what my medical school calls "A qualifier"

On my first day at medical school, the Dean told the audience of 400 or so students, that in four or five years time, 95% of us would be doctors. The reality is that in medical school, most people pass all the exams that are thrown at them. If you, like me, are in the small group that does not pass everything - it is not pleasant.

In February, the students on the five year course did their pre clinical exams. Out of 372 students, 82 failed one or more exams and ended up in the qualifier. In my cohort of graduate entry, 50 sat the pre-clinicals and twelve of us ended up in the qualifier.

Being in the qualifier means that you have to do the whole lot of exams again - even the stuff that you passed. Personally, I passed the clinical exam and one of the written papers, but failed the second written paper. I then had three weeks to study my arse off before sitting the whole lot two weeks ago. Thank God - I passed, and so was allowed to progress to my clinical training. Eight of my fellow qualifieees have not been so lucky and are now off the course.

Having been at this now for eighteen months I have formed some strong opinions on doing medicine as a mature candidate. From what i can see, if anything goes wrong in your life whilst studying medicine, the odds for failing rocket. I think that this is the case for any subject but graduate entry medicine does not allow any buffer for illness, turmoil or wanting to have a life. As you probably know, graduate entrants do the preclinical training in eighteen months instead of 2.5 years. Despite what you may have heard, we do exactly the same modules as the five year lot, (Well apart from a bit of Head and Neck studies, but what's a mandible between friends) so over the three semesters our workload is 33% greater than the five years students.

Some of you might be reading this, thinking that people who fail and end up in the qualifier are there because they haven't worked hard. This is BS - we worked hard, but just not hard enough!
Anyway - enough about qualifiers and stuff - I passed the shitty thing so I made it!! I have no more exams until February 2009. Whohoooooooooooo!!!!!!!