Introduction: Studying Medicine, for many people, is a synonym of abdicating the wholeprevious life and dedicating, exclusively, to a sort of priesthood. It is a synonym of not having right to complain, to feel overwhelmed nor to miss other activities. After all, according tothe society, the student chose this life.
Objective: This study aims to discuss the mental health of medical students around the world.
Methods: A literature review was performed aiming to obtain data to support the discussion.
Results And Discussion: The heaviest workload among Medical Schools rests in Brazil: minimum of 7200 hours. The emotional and content loads compete between themselves to check which one is the most intense. These students behold the greater anxiety, depression and suicide rates amongst all graduating students. A paper analysed around 130 thousand medical students,from 43 countries. Of these, around 11% appeared to have suicidal ideation. The estimated prevalence of depressive symptoms was 27.2%. These rates are five times higher than the ones from the general population. Only 15% of all students looked for professional help.That means around 110 thousand medical students, right now, are whether depressed or thinking about suicide. Medical School also stands on the podium, once again in the first place, for intellectual doping: the use of brain stimulators to enhance wake andconcentration. The reasons for this sad position are many, such as insufficiencysensation and pressure from professors, society, family and themselves.Workload, emotional load and content load are alsodecisive. In addition to that, the knowledge about pharmacology and the constant presence inside health institutions –which, in general, have drugsin their stocks. In the United Kingdom, where drug consuming is monitored thoroughly, 45% of medical students abuse alcohol and use cannabinoids routinely. Between 1990 and 2012, the rate of medical students using Methylphenidate reached 16%. In Brazil, the scenario is similar. In the Federal University of Paraíba, from September to October of 2007, 57% of medical students used psychoactive substances. In 2017, in the city of Ponta Grossa, Paraná, around 10% of health students, from private schools, used some sort of brain stimulator. In the same year, in Federal University of Rio Grande, the prevalence of stimulators’ using at least once in the life was 57.5% and 16.6% of the students consumed more than one substance. Another utopia for medicalstudents is physical activity: from first to last academic year, there is a reduction of 75% in moderate and 80% in intense physical effort. Around 25% of sedentary students are overweight or obese. Information about thelife expectancy of doctors are controversial –India’s Medical Academy say their doctors live ten years less than the general population. Frank affirms that thephysician’s life expectancy is the same as any other American citizen. However, it is known that suicide rates, for instance, overcome five times the rates for the same reason of death for other people.
Conclusion: The abdication of previous life in the name of a typical medical student’s life is certainly a factor associated with mentalhealth disintegration. The professors’ emotional rigidity, possibly, contributes to the students’ emotional rigidity, which, suppressing theirfeelings, lose even more their psychological welfare. Health, in its full concept, is a relevant and concerning theme. It is worthy of multidisciplinary assessment, for is depends on several factors. Analysing the teaching system is urgent and ending negligence against mental sanity is as well. Intellectual doping, sedentary life habits and thealarming rates of suicide are, possibly, secondary to a medical education system that neglects the quality of life of the professionals it is launching in the market. Itis concerned much more in preparing a sufficient number of professionals. In the background, lies quality. It is not viable to reach the ideal rates desired by the precursor studies of the Mais Médicos Law, looking to ameliorate in health system, when most of the leading figures of this system are profoundly ill.
