World Network of Psychiatric Trainees Hosts Forum on Psychiatric Trainees and Mothers: Challenges and Joys

In commemoration of the 2021 Mother’s Day, the World Network of Psychiatric Trainees (WNPT), founded by one of the authors of this article, Victor Pereira-Sanchez, M.D., hosted its third virtual forum. This event, held on May 15, was attended by 50 psychiatrists from more than 20 countries and chaired by the authors of this article. Its recording, published on YouTube and available across many social media platforms, has generated more than 270 views so far. The panelists comprised nine women psychiatrists in training or recently graduated and mothers hailing from seven countries (Indonesia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sudan, Ukraine, and United States). Below are some snippets of their experiences during this journey and their perspectives of what it means to be a mother juggling professional roles while training to be a psychiatrist.

OLUWADOLAPO ADEDAPO, M.B.B.S. (NIGERIA): A mom is saddled with responsibilities of caring for her children and supporting her family. A doctor who doubles as a mom will have to be responsible at work and care for her patients while fulfilling her role as a mother. If she is in training, it means that she has much more work to do! Combining leadership positions with motherhood responsibilities as a trainee doctor is possible, however. The secret lies in building inner strength and resilience, planning ahead, setting targets, exercising good time management skills, acquiring mentors, showing love and care to others, and accepting leadership opportunities.

NATALIA GRINKO, M.D., Ph.D. (UKRAINE): I Just want to say let no one and nothing discourage you from being who you are. And it doesn't really matter in which period of your life you are right now. Being a mom is the most wonderful part of my life, but not the only one. And having been a scientist from a tiny city in a huge world, I’d like to say that I'm a very small girl with very big dreams. I just want to make a difference not only to my daughters but to the rest of the world.

SHEVONNE MATHEIKEN, M.B.B.S. (United Kingdom): The truth is, it does indeed take a village to raise a child. And I just need to look at my medic friends raising kids back home to know that I am sacrificing that village for other things in return. Is it worth it? Should we go back? I do not know. But my yearning to raise my kids and be a doctor in a place where I will never feel like an outsider consumes me more than ever nowadays. I realize painfully that my kids will never have some of the memories that I had. But for now, I am consoling myself that they are growing up in a multi-ethnic, multicultural part of England. And maybe my 7-year-old will learn things that I never knew or heard much about in my childhood, including social inequalities, racism, homophobia and much more. So in a way maybe we are slowly building a little village here, a global and diverse one, and maybe the future isn’t as dire as it feels like sometimes.

RAMYADARSHNI VADIVEL M.B.B.S., (NEW ZEALAND): I might have explained depression to my patients and their families a million times and to young mothers about why they needed to get help, and I spoke about fantastic stories of acceptance and bearing down the stigma. None of that applied when it came to me. Being told that I needed to be strong, that I was a psychiatrist and knew what needed to be done, that I needed to monitor myself, but not that I was human and was allowed to take the time to heal, that I was now a mother and needed to pull up my “psychiatrist mom socks,” that I needed to “fix myself” and be wary of the discomfort I was causing others, but no one wanted to call it depression. Sometimes we find strength in places we least expect it. I wore this badge without shame. I built a tribe by sharing my story and banded with young mothers in health care whose stories needed to be told and heard for the support they needed. And one thing that limited us was the myth that our mental health could not suffer.

EKACHAERYANTI ZAIN, M.D. (INDONESIA): I remember feeling overwhelmed, unfulfilled, insufficient, and lonely throughout my motherhood experience and during my psychiatric training, especially when I had to do psychiatric community service for six months in three different remote areas, with two months in each area. At that time, I tried so hard to admit that those feelings were valid. I live in a patriarchal society that expects me to be fully responsible for my kids even though I was working. One of my most vulnerable moments was in the remote area where I was serving: a place with no electricity for six to 12 hours every day, no clean water for almost two weeks in a month, and only limited clean water for the other two. I remember taking a bath with only two water dippers daily and saving the rest for my kids. Also, I had no good internet signal for almost the entire time. I remember that I cried in front of my colleagues because I felt that I no longer could bear all the motherhood challenges in that circumstance.

MARGARET OJEAHERE, M.B.B.S. (NIGERIA): I would be speaking from the perspective of a mother who has had to defy the stereotype that being a doctor/psychiatrist and a mother are two mutually exclusive events. This has been an uphill task living in a largely patriarchal society: a society that does not ask if it is possible for a man to be a great dad yet have a great career, perhaps because the definition of a great dad is to have a successful career; a society that until recently did not encourage mothers to be psychiatrists. I started my residency when my third child was 6 months old, and combining family and work was Herculean. However, to my chagrin, the discrimination extended beyond being a working mother to my choice of psychiatry. My superiors concluded that I was trying to dodge work and intended to give me a query. So, I had to shuttle between attending to my routine work, taking calls, and looking after my son when he was in the hospital. One of the several issues we contend with is the erroneous misconception that working mothers are not committed and not competent. The bias against working mothers is universal, and, in my opinion, it can be worse among women; perhaps the queen bee syndrome is a contributory factor. Interestingly, several of my male colleagues were more considerate and empathetic during my training especially when I was pregnant with my fourth child.

ALAA ELNAJJAR, M.D., M.Sc. (U.S.): Being a parent and a doctor during the pandemic, I experienced an extra layer of specific and new obstacles related to the quarantine and schools going remote. One of the biggest questions that my husband and I contemplated was “What will happen if we both get severely ill—who will be legally responsible for our kids?’. The pandemic hit us with uncertainties that left us sometimes guilty about being doctors, others questioning why it is solely our responsibility as parents to figure out childcare coverage when we come to work. In my circle of friends and colleagues, many single moms had to leave work to take care of their kids. I was called superwoman/hero for all my work during the pandemic, while I was barely keeping my head above the water. I hope that our communities support parents who seek medical training while taking care of kids, it shouldn’t be that hard to be a parent and a doctor.

RAKA MAITRA, M.B.B.S. (U.K.): Physician mothers with children with complex needs are really hidden voices, beacons of resilience, compassionate clinicians, and invisible transformative leaders. Physician mothers bring to the table an ability to withstand heartbreaking challenges, a view of illness not as a condition that one must necessarily cure but as a journey through which one must preserve personhood and ensure it becomes a celebration of strengths through all those hardships of being ill. Workplaces need to be more inclusive. Flexible working arrangements and support for childcare are some of the things to think about. But before we can recognize and encourage leadership, we need to understand the barriers to careers for those with complex caring responsibilities. If workplaces or training schemes cannot come up with creative solutions to retain this resilient workforce, it would further push this group of physician careers to be a voiceless marginalized group.

NUHA SHAKIR, M.D. (SUDAN): By the age of 2 years, my son was found to have autism spectrum disorder. Since then, my life has not been the same. For so many mothers, hearing the word “mama” comes so easily and naturally. I had to wait for five years to hear this word from him. Despite all the limitations, my child taught me that nothing is impossible. We mothers in Sudan have been going through a long era where all the resources of the country were targeted toward wars and weapons, unfortunately. And now we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I believe that those children are superheroes because they have experienced all those difficulties and yet prove to us that nothing is impossible. My child has brought the best of me. He taught me how to be patient and resilient and gave me hope for the future.

At the end of the event, Prof. Norman Sartorius, past president of the World Psychiatric Association, encouraged the panelists, organizers, and attendees to disseminate widely what had been shared and discussed during the forum. By learning from these global stories, we hope that training program colleagues, directors, attending psychiatrists, and administrators in academic psychiatry gain insight and learn ways to better support women. ■