WELLNESS
#StopTheStigmaEM: A Call to Action for EM Leaders
SAEM PULSE | MARCH-APRIL 2023
By Richard Wolfe, MD, on behalf of the SAEM Wellness Committee
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After returning from vacation in March 2020 to find her department drastically changed and then overseeing the treatment of COVID patients early in the pandemic, Dr. Lorna Breen was afraid to seek care for severe depression. Fears of being scorned by her peers or the risk of losing her medical license made her reluctant to access the help she needed. Despite receiving inpatient mental health care, Dr. Breen ultimately died by suicide. After her death, the Department of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University implemented a well-promoted process allowing providers easy access to anonymous mental health care. In the first year, most
of the department used the service. It’s most likely that the tragedy of her death and the additional loss and grief witnessed from the pandemic may have been the catalyst for the exceptionally high use of the service. In subsequent years, the number using the service has dropped. Now, as we’re shifting gears with the pandemic, we need to be more vigilant about emphasizing and normalizing receiving mental health support because even at its nascent stages, many have anticipated the pandemic’s toll on the mental health of health care workers. Dr. Angela Mills, J. E. Beaumont professor and chair of the department
of emergency medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, was unsure if the drop in use was in part because some of the providers seen the first year were already engaged in regular mental health care. It is also possible that without constant vigilance, encouragement, and normalization, personal concerns about the professional consequences of seeking mental health will reestablish themselves. As Dr. Mills stressed, mental health care checks for providers should have no more stigma than a check-up with one’s primary care physician or getting a routine vaccination.