July 20, 2020

A physician’s struggle with mental illness

"Was I that different? I had severe anxiety necessitating medication, compounded by stress, my own narcissistic tendencies, and a series of life choices—but Jason had something much worse. It all gave me pause. I was now twenty-four, just barely...

"Was I that different? I had severe anxiety necessitating medication, compounded by stress, my own narcissistic tendencies, and a series of life choices—but Jason had something much worse. It all gave me pause. I was now twenty-four, just barely older than Jason when the committee took residence. Would I soon begin hearing voices as well?

I supposed that beginning the long and arduous road of medical education while having an infant at home with a lonely wife in a new place more than a thousand miles from our family counted as enough of a stressful event to trigger whatever may lay dormant in my brain."

Kyle Bradford Jones is a family physician and can be reached on Twitter @kbjones11.

He shares his story and discusses his book, Fallible: A Memoir of a Young Physician’s Struggle with Mental Illness. (https://amzn.to/30oJezU)