We don’t talk about this enough. Not properly. Not honestly.
We talk about burnout. We talk about resilience. We talk about wellness initiatives, mindfulness apps, and the importance of taking breaks. But we rarely talk about what it actually feels like to be a doctor at 2am, sitting alone at your kitchen table, wondering how something you once loved has become this heavy.
This is not a small problem. It’s not a niche issue affecting a handful of struggling doctors. It is widespread, systemic, and, by most measures, getting worse.
Research published in JAMA suggests that somewhere between 40–60% of physicians experience burnout, depending on specialty and setting West et al., 2018. That’s not a fringe issue. That’s your colleagues. Your friends. Quite possibly you.
Rates of depression are higher in physicians than in the general population. And suicide—something we still struggle to speak about openly—remains one of the leading causes of death among doctors. Data from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention suggests that hundreds of physicians die by suicide each year in the United States alone.
Pause on that for a moment. These are the people trained to keep others alive.
At Physicians Anonymous, we’ve been having this conversation for years. In earlier blogs, we’ve explored why burnout is not simply about long hours, why resilience—while important—is not enough, and why the system itself plays a central role in what we are seeing.
In “Physician resilience and burnout: not so simple”, we challenged the idea that doctors just need to be tougher. In “How do we reach the suffering physician?”, we asked a more uncomfortable question: why are the doctors who most need support often the least likely to access it?
Because that’s the real issue here. It’s not just that physicians are struggling. It’s that many are doing so in silence.
Despite growing awareness, more wellness programmes, and increasing institutional focus on mental health, there remains a significant unmet need. A study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings found that physicians frequently avoid seeking help due to fear—fear of professional consequences, concerns about licensing, stigma, and doubts about confidentiality Dyrbye et al., 2019.
In other words, we have created a system where asking for help can feel risky. So people don’t.
And what does that look like in real life? It doesn’t always look dramatic. It rarely does.
It looks like the GP who hasn’t slept properly in months but keeps going. The trainee who feels a quiet sense of dread before every shift. The consultant who has become emotionally numb after years of caring. The surgeon who cannot switch off, even at home.
It looks like functioning. Until, eventually, it doesn’t.
Burnout is often misunderstood as simply being tired. It’s not. It is a combination of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and a loss of meaning in work. The World Health Organization now recognises burnout as an occupational phenomenon, not a personal failure WHO, 2019.
And yet, many doctors still internalise it as a personal weakness. “Something is wrong with me.” That belief—quiet, persistent, and rarely challenged—is part of the problem.
There’s also a paradox at play. The more distressed a physician becomes, the less likely they are to reach out. Isolation increases. Perspective narrows. The idea of asking for help becomes harder, not easier.
Which means that many of our current solutions, while well-intentioned, miss the mark. Not because they are wrong, but because they don’t reach the people who need them most.
So where do we go from here?
We need to rethink how we support doctors. Not in theory, but in practice. We need spaces that feel safe. Conversations that are confidential. Support that is peer-based, human, and free from judgment. And systems that do not punish vulnerability.
This is why Physicians Anonymous exists. Not as a perfect solution, but as a response to a very real and very persistent gap.
If you are reading this as a physician, there is a reasonable chance that some of this resonates. Perhaps more than you expected.
And if it does, it’s worth saying this clearly: you are not the only one sitting at that kitchen table at 2am.
Not even close.
This Mental Health Awareness Month, awareness is not enough. We need honesty. We need better systems. And we need to make it easier—for all of us—to admit that being a doctor is, at times, incredibly hard. Because it is. But we are not alone.
