Content warning: This article contains discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation.
Justin Bullock, MD, MPH
In early 2020, Justin Bullock, MD, MPH, did what few, if any, resident physicians have done: He published an honest account in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) of a would-be suicide attempt during medical training.
In the article, Bullock matter-of-factly lays out how in 2019, intern-year night shifts contributed to a depressive episode. For Bullock, who has a bipolar disorder, sleep dysregulation can be deadly. He had a plan for completing suicide, and this wouldn't have been his first attempt. Thanks to his history and openness about his condition, Bullock had an experienced care team that helped him get to a psychiatric hospital before anything happened. While there for around 5 days, he wrote the bulk of the NEJM article.
The article took Bullock's impact nationwide. In the medical world, where mental illness is a serious problem but still deeply stigmatized, Bullock's unblinking honesty on the issue is still radical to many. On Twitter and in interviewsBullock is an unapologetic advocate for accommodations for people in medicine with mental illness. "One of the things that inspired me to speak out early on is that I feel I stand in a place of so much privilege," Bullock told Medscape Medical News.
