A lead story that will make you sad and/or FURIOUS
The rest of the newsletter has lots of fish and dogs. LOTS of fish, especially.
We’re failing our doctors and they’re dying
A sobering report from Vox on the impact of stress and burnout on doctors.
Medicine is, ironically, a profession that punishes some doctors for getting mental health care. Many physicians work under intense pressure and are exposed to trauma on the job. A worrying number of doctors die by suicide each year. Yet structural barriers — enforced in part by medical boards and hospital systems — frequently discourage doctors from accessing care that could save their lives.
One of those barriers is a fear of what can happen to doctors who receive treatment. In dozens of states, medical boards ask physicians sweeping questions about their health histories that would require them to disclose a diagnosis or treatment for mental illness. Similar questions come up when doctors apply for hospital credentials or insurance reimbursements. A disclosure can trigger a call to appear before the state board, a demand for medical records, or even a psychiatric evaluation. In the worst cases, doctors may be restricted in how they practice medicine or even lose their licenses.
The story examines the case of Dr. Scott Jolley, age 55, who died by suicide and shouldn’t have. The medical establishment failed him in his time of crisis.
In an interview, Dr. David Barnes, the president of Utah Emergency Physicians, told Vox that the experience with Jolley has caused his group to learn that “people can be struggling without it being obvious or apparent on the surface.”
The fact that this was something Dr. Barnes had to recently learn is pathetic. Shame on all of them.
But doesn’t suicide happen in all professions? Sure. But:
One recent study, based on five years of CDC data from 27 states, estimated that an average of 119 doctors take their own lives in the US each year. That number is comparable to the suicide rate in the general population, but it’s likely an undercount, says Dr. Katherine Gold, the lead author on the study and an associate professor at the University of Michigan Medical School. The toll could be as large as 300 to 400 deaths per year — according to an oft-cited estimate —roughly double the suicide rate in the general population.
Party in the Mesopelagic!
I read this article last night and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s from 2014 but that doesn’t really matter because it’s about a much broader sweep of time.
Basically, almost all fish are hidden from us. We can’t observe them, we can only posit that they are there.
They are the DARK FISH.
An international team of marine biologists has found mesopelagic fish in the earth's oceans constitute 10 to 30 times more biomass than previously thought.
UWA Professor Carlos Duarte says mesopelagic fish – fish that live between 100 and 1000m below the surface – must therefore constitute 95 per cent of the world's fish biomass.
It’s good news for the health of the oceans because these fish can detect nets and thus can’t be caught. Previous scientific assumptions were that this area was a fish desert (not a fish dessert) and no one was there. Turns out almost everyone was there!
There are mental health implications for humans.
At least if you’re into symbolism. One of the most effective balms I’ve found for depression, not a cure but a sort of pain reliever, is activities that expand my world. Just things I can think to do that remind me that there is way more to the place I live than the routines and worries and self-directed emotional blasts that can, unchecked, consume much of my day.
This is why I like to get out of town. This is why I like to get out to nature in a place I’ve never been before. This is why I like the ocean. This is why, when I went to movie theaters more confidently, I’d go to the arthouse cinema in Minneapolis and choose a movie I knew nothing about.
Now I can travel to the mesopelagic zone. I would think with that many fish there are bound to be species of fish we’ve never heard of and perhaps some weird looking ones.
Here are some weird looking fish that we know about.
They are weird looking enough to make me feel like my world is expansive and I can pay attention to more than just myself. I can look at these fish and feel more serene and less stressed out.
One thing we know is that these fish probably have big eyes.
They have large eyes to see in the dim light, and also enhanced pressure-sensitivity.
So they’re cute.
I’m Basically Guy Lindsey Vonn
Olympic skiing gold medalist and I have so much in common. We’ve spent time living in Minnesota. We believe in the power of therapy. (In fact, Sey says everyone should have a therapist.) We’ve both won Olympic gold medals (pending, in my case). And we both know that dogs help mental health. She has three dogs.
She adopted one of her dogs, Leo, in 2014 while recovering from a knee injury that caused her to miss the Sochi Games. And Vonn famously brought another, Lucy, with her as she traveled for competition in the final years of her career, including to the Pyeongchang Olympics.
"I think dogs give you a level of unconditional love and support that you don't, unfortunately, get from humans," Vonn said. "Lucy doesn't know that I ski race. She doesn't care. She's just happy every time I walk through the door. For me, that always gave me a sense of peace and stability. And it grounded me, because it made me keep everything in perspective."
Here’s Lindsey Vonn with what I hope are her dogs. Either that or she broke into a house full of other dogs, befriended them, and then got photographed before taking a nice nap.
Dog Power Dynamics
This has nothing to do with mental health.
At my house, we sometimes dog sit for a friend’s puppy. Leo.
Leo was over last night and Sally, our older benign alpha, was fine with Leo playing and cavorting. Maisy, dog number two who works a lot harder on tasks like looking out the window for rabbits to bark at, could not handle Leo. She would growl and sometimes fire off a round of warning barks. She wasn’t going to bite the poor kid, she just wanted Leo to do what she told him, even though she had told him nothing.
Here’s what I think was going on in Maisy’s head: “If Sally is older and I am younger… and THIS dog is younger… then what AM I?” I think Maisy was having an existential crisis.
And that’s hard when you’re only as smart as Maisy is. She’s not very smart.
Anyway, we finally put Leo upstairs and Maisy downstairs with a closed door between and Maisy instantly fell asleep.
I’m still very worked up from that first story so let me try to find something more whimsical here
Conan O’Brien is ending his talk show this week. He is the first talk show host from roughly my generation and the first one that I ever felt a close connection to. Letterman was great but in a smart-aleck uncle or teacher way. Conan’s sense of humor is most like my own. I never met him but I have gotten to know Andy Richter a little and can report that he’s the same guy in real life as he is on screen: smart, funny, normal.
Anyway, here are two of my favorite clips from Conan: