Support Mental Health in the Medical Field!

Medical Minds Matter is a startup nonprofit organization that seeks to transform the narrative of mental health in the medical field through storytelling, community-building, and advocacy efforts. The organization aims to establish a national chapter network involving medical schools, undergraduate institutions and healthcare workplaces to promote grassroots advocacy and spread awareness about mental health in medicine. Medical Minds Matters hopes to support the medical community in a manner that cultivates wellness, acceptance, and healing.

Physician burnout and suicide rates are at all time highs. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the medical community already reported a 44% burnout rate among physicians, and physicians were dying by suicide at over double the rate compared to the general population.

Much of these issues stem from professional stigma - many physicians fear repercussions to their medical license, and students fear scrutiny by residency and medical school admissions committees. This culture of stigma causes a general lack of help seeking behavior among members of the medical community from an early age.

Due to fear, many physicians report using evasive or unethical methods of obtaining treatment, including: self prescribing, paying for treatment with cash to avoid health insurance records, or lying to licensing boards about their mental health history.

Some members of the medical community feel as if they have no one to turn to, resorting to suicide. An estimated 400 physicians die per year, a rate equivalent to one per day or several medical school classes per year. Let’s change this!