What caused your depression?

I'm a junior doctor in the UK. For five years, I had my heart set on becoming a General Practitioner (family doctor for any Americans reading this). I attended several primary care conferences and organised my own elective placements in medical school to gain experience in a combination of rural and urban practices. As part of my junior doctor training, I started a four month job rotation in general practice in August last year. I had already started preparing to apply for the 3 year GP training programme in December. Anyway, fast forward a few weeks and I knew something wasn't right. I started feeling exhausted all the time, had no energy or motivation, and didn't enjoy anything I normally enjoyed. Things were so bad that I had to take a couple of days off work. Thinking there was something wrong with my physical health, I went to see my own GP. I thought I could have been anaemic as I am a vegan. Standard blood tests were done (GPs call these 'tired all the time' bloods) but they were all normal. This is when it dawned on me that the reason I felt so awful was that I was depressed and that, no matter how hard I tried to tell myself otherwise, I wasn't enjoying my job rotation in primary care. Interestingly, my girlfriend had suspected I wasn't enjoying it long before I realised it myself.

I had previously had fleeting thoughts of becoming a pathologist and remembered really enjoying learning about pathology at medical school. I organised a week of shadowing in the pathology department and absolutely loved it so, rather than applying to GP training as I had originally planned, I applied to pathology training the following week (the application deadline was the beginning of December). To cut a long story short(er), after waiting for two months, being interviewed in February, and waiting another two months (four agonising months in total), I was offered a job in April!

Throughout this time, I was prescribed different antidepressants and referred for cognitive behavioural therapy, although there was a several month waiting list for this. Citalopram helped slightly but gave me night sweats, strange vivid dreams, and other side effects so I was instead prescribed mirtazapine, which made me feel like a zombie and did nothing to help my low mood. I started CBT after waiting for around three months; I have learned a lot about myself and developed a sense of self awareness in order to recognise when I'm not feeling great.

I feel that my depression was largely situational due to my career crisis. I have been able to come off antidepressants and can't wait to start pathology training in August this year. I hope that everyone out there struggling with mental illness is able to get the support that they need and deserve. Mental illness can affect anyone at any time and should not be stigmatised.

TL;DR Junior doctor with depression due to career crisis. Had dreamt of becoming a GP but is now going to be a pathologist instead.

/r/AskReddit Thread