MPANZ 2016* Doctor Heal Thyself: Depression (#27)
This presentation approaches the topic of “Depression” from the perspectives of parent, GP and psychotherapist. Mary will consider how becoming a parent might change us, effecting our way of being in the world including our medical work, and how being a medical practitioner might influence our parenting. Her work is informed by her medical training, her psychotherapy training, and co-parenting her 8 and 10 year old sons, amongst other life adventures. She is dissatisfied with a mainstream bio-medical view of “depression” and considers various other ways to think about it that might be helpful.
She will reflect on her own experience, including relationship complexities, a medical emergency and ICU admission at the birth of her first son, and a strong family history of depression. She contemplates how being a health professional neither inoculates us from personal distress, nor gives us any advantage in providing “good-enough” parenting for our children.
Mary’s own life has taken twists and turns that she did not expect at the beginning of medical school, and she will include some discussion of co-parenting in separated families and the idea of the “emotional roof” adults can provide for children even when they are no longer together.
In short, she argues that it’s actually best NOT to try to heal yourself; accept that the most effective healers are somewhat wounded themselves, and that we all need to access help and support from others including our colleagues.
