Study claims women doctors with kids most at risk of mental breakdown during pandemic

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

Women doctors with children are most at risk of a mental breakdown during the pandemic, according to new research.

They are much more prone to depression and anxiety than their male counterparts reveals the study.

Lockdown closures of schools and childcare providers forced many to stay home - when they were needed most.

Study first author Dr. Elena Frank, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan , says COVID-19 has increased the burden placed upon them.

"These findings show the need for immediate action to ensure they have access to adequate support at work and at home," she said.

The survey of hundreds of parent doctors in the US follows a warning from the BMA that women doctors in the NHS were struggling to cope.

It showed the crisis has disrupted the home and work lives of mothers more often than fathers.

They were much more likely to lose childcare or in-person school (84% vs. 66%) and have primary responsibility for it (25% vs. 1%).

They were more likely to perform the majority of day-to-day household tasks (31% vs. 7%).

They were nearly twice as likely to mainly work from home during the pandemic’s early months (41% vs. 22%).

There was an even greater difference in couples where both are physicians working full-time (65% vs. 25%)

They were more than twice as likely to have voluntarily reduced their work hours during the pandemic (19% vs 9%).

This is despite physician-mothers already being less likely to work full-time before the pandemic (73% vs. 91%).

In couples where both were doctors working full-time before the pandemic, 26% of the women reduced their hours compared to 3% of the men.

They were also far more likely to report conflict between their work and family life using a standard questionnaire.

This was after taking into account their children's age, medical specialty and partner employment status.

The team used data from the Intern Health Study study of early-career doctors, including information on their pre-pandemic mental health.

Participants were enrolled more than a decade ago, when they were in their first year of post-medical school training.

They were questioned again in 2018 and in August 2020 when 215 had children under the age of 18.

Physician-mothers scored significantly higher than physician-fathers on depression and anxiety symptoms after the pandemic began.

For both genders, less sleep was associated with higher scores on both mental health measures.

Focusing on the 180 physicians in the study who had already become parents by the time they took the pre-pandemic survey in 2018, the researchers found a striking effect.

Where physician-mothers and physician-fathers had scored about the same on depression levels pre-pandemic, by August 2020 the women scored significantly higher than men on the depression scale.

The researchers also compared physician-parents with physicians who were not parents in 2018 or 2020.

The non-parents had no gender gap in depression or anxiety scores on either survey.

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, is the first to provide evidence that pandemic conditions have contributed to gender disparities in work-family conflict and mental health status among physician-parents.

It also confirms anecdotal reports that the emotional toll and career costs are greater for mothers than fathers.

Frank added: "Establishing institutional and public policy solutions to mitigate the long-term effects on the well-being and careers of physician-mothers will also be critical, including a viable path for re-integration into medicine as we move out of the pandemic."

Last year the BMA found female doctors in the UK are less likely to be working on the front line of the coronavirus crisis because they struggle to secure childcare.

A poll found 13 percent of 4,100 doctors had been unable to work or had been forced to cut their hours for this reason.

Dr. Helena McKeown, chair of the BMA representative body, said both male and female doctors who have children were struggling but the burden of high childcare costs often fell particularly hard on women.

McKeown, who is a GP, said doctors' anxiety around the inability to find childcare could make them more likely to commit errors while caring for patients with Covid-19 and other health issues.

Intern Health Study principal investigator professor Srijan Sen, also from Michigan, said: "Mothers across professions have been torn between their careers and their home lives during the pandemic.

"We were fortunate that we had followed these physicians from before the pandemic allowing us to understand how their lives changed. Mothers in other professions likely had similar experiences.”

The Intern Health Study is also studying the impact of the pandemic on physicians who were in training at many US and Chinese teaching hospitals during 2020 and 2021.

First-year residents, called interns, go through a similarly intense experience.

The study uses them as a population that gives insights into the roles of sleep, stress, and genetics on mental health.