Aussie-Chinese Girl Reflects on Her Med Practitioner Journey

What is R U OK all about?  - National public health charity → National Conversation Movement  - Started by Gavin Larkin in 2009 as a why to champion just one question in honour of his father, Barry Larkin, who tragically passed from suicide in 1997 much to the shock and grief of his family, friends, and everyone else around him - Collation of resources developed from LIVED EXPERIENCE to support HELP-GIVERS in asking R U OK and having the skills, knowledge, and confidence to engage in MEANINGFUL CONVERSATION if the answer is no  - Suicide prevention is the RESPONSIBILITY OF ALL  - Campaign about building INFORMAL SUPPORT NETWORK → friends, family, colleagues, local communities, interest groups etc START THE CONVO TODAY Click here for more tips & tricks!  “Without R U OK? the landscape would look very different. There is great value in demonstrating to the whole community that they can contribute to suicide prevention and then, importantly, showing them how. ...

  In line with UMMSS' (University of Melbourne Medical Students' Society) Blue Week, I'm going to share parts (b/c let's be real, if I shared the whole story we'd still be here a year later) of my own mental health journey and debunk some myths about mental health through personal experience and current research.  Myth #1: I will never experience mental health issues / I am immune  AHAHAHAHAHA famous last words cuz that's what I truly believed before I got hit by the tornado known as the downward mental health spiral 💀 Looking back, my mental health probably started its downward descent insidiously from the beginning of undergrad back in 2017 but reached the critical threshold in MD2 2021 (first attempt) post Easter break and the descent became more like a snowball tumbling down the Alps 😓 Fact #1: According to the  2022 National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing  (Australia): -  >2 in 5  Australians between 16-85yo (43.7% or 8.6 million ppl) h...

UPDATE: this post is now a permanent page that will be continuously updated!  Lemme know by email or private messaging if you would not like to be identified but w/o further ado, I wanna thank each and every one of the people below from the bottom of my heart Patient Shout Outs (de-identified for confidentiality) - Mrs B for being the pt who reignited my passion for medicine and reminding me why I decided to go into medicine in the first place. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your medical journey, I will never forget this interaction for the rest of my life. You will be the first patient that I think of when medicine inevitably gets hard and will try to make me jaded - I will remember your patience w me as I fumbled my way through a history and full body examination across 2 days and remind myself that I chose to stick with medicine instead of quitting like I almost did b/c I wanted go into a career that will allow me to to help patients and their families during a period...