Why doctors hide their own depression until it nearly breaks them

For 23 years, an emergency physician stayed calm in the chaos and held the line. Then one night he sat in the hospital parking lot, unable to start his car and drive home. In this episode, Kenneth Scott Burnham shares how depression crept up on him gradually, how his clinical training gave him the tools to deny it for years, and what he learned once he was the patient instead of the doctor. He explains why the health care system is good at stabilizing people in crisis but nearly indifferent to what comes next, where the long wait for care and the gap between knowing what to do and being able to do it is where recovery is won or lost. This episode is based on his article "The real work starts after a mental health crisis," published on KevinMD. You will hear why asking for help is a clinical act rather than a personal failing, and why the crisis is the turning point, not the end of the story.

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