Help deliver Christmas cheer

You’re tired, always tired. Exhausted. That niggle that you’ve been ignoring for the last few months has now turned into constant pain. You’re not getting enough sleep. The coffee gets stronger and stronger. The occasional glass of wine has turned into the regular bottle. You’re not feeling well enough to go to work. Your cold is lingering, but Mrs Jones has been waiting for her appointment for two months, and you wouldn’t be able to squeeze her in again this side of Christmas. And besides, the mortgage won’t pay for itself. All around you are people with more. Bigger. Better. Faster. Meanwhile, your car has just broken down and you’re not sure how you’re going to pay for it. If you can just sell more crowns. Do more whitening. How can you fit that in when you have your targets? UDA. KPI. Profitability. Maybe this course will change everything? It won’t, of course. But the never-ending chase to reach the next level will continue until you collapse. By then it may be too late. dental profession has long been associated with a high risk of suicide. We cannot ignore the elephant in the room any longer. In the past help has been almost non-existent, but recently there has been a turnaround. The Facebook Group ‘Mental Dental – A Group For Dentists in Crisis’ has been pivotal in raising awareness of current mental health issues in the profession. This has recently been joined by services including the BDA’s own ‘Health Assured’ helpline which aims to help with a wide range of issues. Through this, it must be remembered that in order to put patients’ interests first, you have to be in a fit state to practise dentistry. You can’t look after patients if you can’t look after yourself. And in order to look after ourselves, we’ll need to look out for each other. Learn to recognise the signs that someone may be struggling. Those in the midst of burnout often don’t realise until it’s too late. Reach out. Support your colleagues. We’re so busy looking after other people that sometimes we can forget to look after ourselves. Burnout is a real risk for many of us. The associated drop in performance or apathy towards our jobs may lead to mistakes. Increasing stress. Accelerating that burnout. As a profession, we need to learn to look after each other. Dentistry can be insular, often with minimal social interaction outside the four walls of the surgery. This combined with the competitive nature of local businesses and the increasing shadow of corporate structures with associated targets driving performance, the world of dentistry seems tailor-made to encourage burnout. I’d venture to guess that every one of us could use some form of support at any one stage of our careers. Like other mental health issues, there has been limited real practical help for those in need. Newly graduated practitioners are particularly at risk, often being dropped in at the deep end, to a system of UDAs which they’re unprepared for, with a skill set that requires careful nurturing and development. This system has to change. Dentistry has to react to this unspoken crisis. The