Mental Health Awareness Day

 

In healthcare, we are expected—almost instinctively—to continue functioning despite exhaustion, grief, trauma, or the quiet collapse of our own foundations. We learn to compartmentalise. We learn to carry on. And sometimes, we learn to disappear behind the masks we wear.

I do not believe this day is only about doctors, nor do I believe it should be reduced to an annual ritual that arrives with a speech, posters, and flyers, only to be forgotten by the next morning.

This is about all of us.

Doctors, nurses, paramedics, allied health professionals, support staff—people who spend their lives caring for others while often neglecting themselves.

We learn to identify depression in a patient, yet may hesitate to acknowledge it in our own reflection.

I have seen clinicians continue working while emotionally depleted, anxious, burned out, or traumatised. I have seen some labelled as "unable to cope," as though suffering were a personal weakness rather than a human response to extraordinary circumstances.

Many of us live with the fear of judgement. We worry about becoming the subject of whispers in corridors where composure is mistaken for strength and vulnerability is often misunderstood.

When people think of doctors, they imagine comfortable salaries, luxury cars, large homes, and endless travel. They rarely see the human being beneath the title.

They do not see the countless encounters with death, the long companionship with uncertainty, the moments when violence leaves invisible scars, or the burden of decisions that have no perfect answer.

They do not see the moral wounds carried in silence, nor the weight of witnessing suffering—day after day, year after year—until grief settles quietly into the fabric of one's being.

They do not see the nights spent studying, the exams that loom like storms on the horizon, the relentless pressure to prove yourself worthy again and again.

And beyond the hospital walls, they do not see the personal battles, the losses, the heartbreaks, the exhaustion, or the simple human struggles at home.

They do not see the sleepless hours after a shift, when the mind refuses to rest.

They do not see the nightmares.

The self-doubt.

The lingering sense of failure when an outcome could not be changed.

Or the simple ache of carrying a patient's suffering long after leaving the hospital.

Yes, the distance between glorifying self-sacrifice and self-destruction is far smaller than we would like to admit.

Dear institution, directors and managers, compassion should never stop at the patient's bedside. It must also reach the people wearing the scrubs, carrying the MET pager, and all the staff walking silently through hospital corridors while trying to hold themselves together.

Protecting the mental health of healthcare workers is not separate from patient care—it is an essential part of it.

A doctor or nurse who seeks help is not less competent. They are human enough to recognise their limits and responsible enough to seek support.

Yet too often, wellbeing initiatives end with a list of phone numbers, emails, flyers, and helplines.

Their intention is genuine. But also the concern is real.

Yet, concern alone is not enough.

I still do not see the sustained, practical support that many of us have been asking for.

- No meaningful ongoing assessment of staff wellbeing.

- Huddles growing shorter, focused less on connection and more on surviving the next wave of pressure.

- Teams so overwhelmed that relief becomes the only objective.

- The level of disconnection between colleagues feels deeper than ever before.

In a place like ours—where we have witnessed the devastating impact of mental illness firsthand, where we lost a cherished colleague not so long ago—we must ask ourselves:

How many more do we need to lose before we truly listen?

Before we truly act?

Perhaps the answer begins with something simple.

Let us take a moment for ourselves.

Let us do what we have always done best: care.

Check on the people around you.

Then check again. Even if they insist they are fine. Even if they become annoyed by your persistence.

Look into your colleagues’ eyes, not only at wall mounted monitor screens.

Ask how they are coping.

Ask whether they need help.

Sometimes a conversation changes the course of a life.

Sometimes a smile reaches a place that medicine cannot.

Always remember, a healthy profession is not one in which nobody struggles. It is one in which nobody is forced to struggle alone.

And certainly not in silence.

Flower Under The Rock

Once upon a time, on the rugged slopes of life's mountains, there stood an ancient rock, one of the largest among its kin.

Each morning, it awoke with the sun resting upon its shoulders. The dry winds would strike its weathered face, while distant songs drifted upward from valleys far below. The mountaintop was a restless place, forever swept by wandering gusts, yet the rock remained unmoved—silent, steadfast, and deeply rooted in the earth that gave it strength.

Seasons came and went, and solitude became its only companion.

Then one day, a tiny seed, carried carelessly by the wind, found refuge beneath the rock's sheltering shadow.

It was so small that the rock never saw it arrive.

Yet somehow, he sensed a quiet pulse of life stirring beneath him—a secret unfolding in the darkness.

Slowly, the seed became a flower.

Delicate and bright, she grew under his protection, drinking sunlight by day and leaning against his ancient body by night. Whenever her slender stem brushed his rough skin, or her petals danced against his surface, the old rock felt something he had never known before.

He felt alive.

The sun seemed warmer. The winds sang sweeter songs. The endless years no longer tasted of loneliness.

And so they shared the seasons together.

But flowers measure time differently than rocks.

One day, beneath his watchful gaze, her petals faded. Her colors dimmed. Her stem bowed to the earth, and she returned to the soil from which she had come.

That night, the rock wept.

He wept until his sorrow rose into the heavens, and the clouds themselves could no longer hold their tears. Rain fell across the mountainsides as though the sky had joined him in mourning.

When dawn arrived, he refused to open his eyes.

Days passed.

His only comfort was the fragile hope that somewhere, somehow, he might see her again.

Then one morning, while he kept his eyes tightly shut, he sensed something familiar.

A fragrance.

Soft at first, then impossibly strong.

The scent of wildflowers.

His heart trembled.

Slowly, he opened his eyes.

And there she was.

Not as one flower, but as thousands.

The entire mountainside had become a sea of blossoms, stretching farther than sight could reach. Every breeze carried her perfume. Every color echoed her memory.

What he had believed was an ending had become a beginning.

And for the first time, the old rock understood:

Life never truly disappears into the earth.

Sometimes, it simply returns as a whole valley in bloom.

Even Plants Feel

 

I have always been fascinated by the quiet wisdom of plants—how they know precisely when to unfurl their leaves, when to bloom, and when to offer their fruits to the world.

As winter settles in, this Narcissus amaryllis stirs beneath the earth, gently parting the soil with its emerald fingers. Yet it guards its blossoms with patience, refusing to release them until spring lingers at the doorstep.

What appears to us as instinct is in fact a remarkable symphony: photoreceptors sensing the changing light, temperature whispering its secrets, hormones such as auxin and florigen carrying their messages, all guided by an exquisitely precise circadian clock.

A silent intelligence, written not in thought, but in the language of life itself.

Happy first of June.