I'm confused as to why blanket "antidepressants" are being treated as performance enhancing drugs in the same line as stimulants (as u/ravenstine has posited in a sibling comment). Med school is psychologically taxing which can cause or exacerbate depression. People that have clinical depression should get some sort of treatment for their depression.
Yes, I agree with you that the environment needs to be changed so that it is more hospitable from a mental health standpoint. But this doesn't change the fact that you have medical students right now that are not being treated for the clinical depression from which they are suffering.
One of the absolute issues with the statement "75% of med students are on antidepressants or stimulants" is that it conflates appropriate medication for diagnosed disorders with illegal misuse of Schedule II stimulants for competition. Your typical first-line antidepressants (eg, sertraline, escitalopram) aren't scheduled and are pretty easy to obtain via a PCP visit. They don't offer a "competitive advantage" unless people consider stuff like "being happy" or "not wanting to kill oneself" as an unfair competitive advantage in medical school.
> keep raising the bar based on entrants and dropout rate..
Dropout rates in med school are actually extremely low, at least in the US. Burnout rates as physicians, however...
Yes, I agree with you that the environment needs to be changed so that it is more hospitable from a mental health standpoint. But this doesn't change the fact that you have medical students right now that are not being treated for the clinical depression from which they are suffering.
One of the absolute issues with the statement "75% of med students are on antidepressants or stimulants" is that it conflates appropriate medication for diagnosed disorders with illegal misuse of Schedule II stimulants for competition. Your typical first-line antidepressants (eg, sertraline, escitalopram) aren't scheduled and are pretty easy to obtain via a PCP visit. They don't offer a "competitive advantage" unless people consider stuff like "being happy" or "not wanting to kill oneself" as an unfair competitive advantage in medical school.
> keep raising the bar based on entrants and dropout rate..
Dropout rates in med school are actually extremely low, at least in the US. Burnout rates as physicians, however...