Dealing with death every moment, medical professionals in dire need of healing

House maids are no longer keen to work in houses with doctors. Others, they plead, have stopped employing them because they serve doctors, afraid that it would endanger them. They have no option but to stop working for medical professionals. This, a doctor joked, is the unkindest cut after all that frontline health workers are going through.

Panic attacks are being reported by more doctors and health workers than ever before. Dr Meenal (34) was leaving her clinic when she broke out in a sweat. A sudden bout of breathlessness overpowered her as she collapsed while trying to clutch at the wall for support. She was luckily still in her clinic and the nursing staff rushed to her help. Her oxygen level was found to be normal; so was her pulse rate. But her sugar level had dropped dramatically though she had no history of diabetes. It was a panic attack.

Young medical professionals are going through life-transforming experiences. Seema(27) was posted to a rural hospital but found to her horror villagers shunning her because of her ‘surname’which identified her as one from a low caste. They would rather die but not get treated by her, she realized. As villagers mourned yet another death and wailed, she sat helplessly. It was a soul-shattering experience, she admits.

“Every evening when I drive back home, I dread about the physical and mental stress of my husband, also a doctor,” admits Shalini, who is expecting. She is assailed by doubts and fearful of the future that her child would face. The decision to raise a family, she now feels, was premature and should have been delayed. “Many of my friends posted on Covid duty confess feeling helpless in relieving the pain of their patients,” recalls Rohit, a dentist. Platitudes to patients now sound like pathetic lies.

The pandemic is leaving personal relationships in tatters. Rohan broke off recently with his steady girlfriend for five years. Covid duty and night shifts left him too exhausted to even talk. The girlfriend, who is a corporate executive, grumbles that Rohan would not even call her to say he was fine. “If he cannot make even a small gesture like a phone call, it is better we break off now,” she confided to the counsellor.

Others report ailments they never had before. A leading gynaecologist in her fifties, Khushboo, confesses that what began as a tingling sensation in her ears has now led to a chronic headache and a buzz in her ears which no longer allows her to concentrate on what others are saying.

Not surprisingly, there has been an exponential rise in cases of medical professionals turning to psychologists and psychiatrists. “We are now attending to calls from them late in the night. Mental health specialists are now kept on their toes after 10 pm because that is when the calls from medical professionals are pouring in,” confides Shama, a clinical psychologist.

Psychologists and therapists themselves are having a hard time. Astha (37), a clinical psychologist, recalls that while she was trying to talk a young patient out of his suicidal thoughts, she received news of her father testing positive.

If April was the cruellest month, doctors dread what the rest of the year has in store. The only silver lining is the recognition that issues related to mental health can no longer be pushed under the carpet.

(Dr Amita Puri is Director, Optimus Center for Well being & Deaddiction Centre, Gurgaon)