This Global News report makes explicit what the study just below only hints at: mental health issues are as widespread as ever, but it's not being noticed and dealt with. Coronavirus: Quebec doctor’s death by suicide sends shockwaves through Canada’s medical community. Excerpt:
The death of a Granby, Que., emergency physician has sent shockwaves throughout the Canadian medical community.
Dr. Karine Dion, 35, who was also the mother of a young son, died by suicide earlier in January. Her family said it was the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic that led to her death.
“Her family and her husband have gone public with this death to let the public know the immense distress that health workers are experiencing on the front lines of this pandemic,” said Dr. Naheed Dosani, a palliative care physician and a health justice activist.
“Throughout this pandemic, our health workers on the front lines, my colleagues, have experienced significant mental stress, losses, trauma, grief, and a burden that is really hard to put in words.”
The burnout rate of doctors practicing emergency medicine is estimated at around 86 per cent, according to a recent survey by the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP), the national organization representing emergency physicians across the country.
The same survey found “frontline staff will be adversely affected by COVID-19 both during and after the pandemic.”
Around 14 per cent of those surveyed had contemplated suicide during their staff career in emergency medicine, and of those physicians almost six per cent had actively considered suicide in the past year.
“We know whenever there’s stress with the added pressure, and the stress becomes prolonged, we feel there is a sense of powerlessness, helplessness. It does increase or can increase the risk for psychological risk conditions, physical risk conditions, and also burnout as well,” explained Dr. Katy Kamkar, a Toronto-based clinical psychologist.
Dosani said the pandemic has increased the pressure felt by frontline health-care workers exponentially.
