October 7, 2020 Wellness Editors: Cara Allen, MA Wednesday Todd P. Levin, DO Sticks and Stones - Confronting the Full Spectrum of Racism N Engl J Med 2020; 383: 1103-1105 By Lisa Caulley, MD, MPH

On May 25, 2020, Amy Cooper unexpectedly stepped into the spotlight as the face of racism. In an incident in New York City’s Central Park in New York that quickly went viral, Ms. Cooper threatened to — and then did — falsely claim that a Black man, Christian Cooper, was threatening her life after he asked her to leash her dog. Captured on video placing an emergency call, Ms. Cooper audibly and visibly changed her tone and demeanor to mimic those of a person in distress, in an attempt to rally police support. Tried in the court of public opinion, Ms. Cooper was widely condemned on social media.

Outrage was the clear overtone of many of the initial responses to Ms. Cooper’s words and actions, but it was not long before some people questioned — either outright or in hushed tones — whether she had been punished too severely. Should we be concerning ourselves with verbal acts of racism, even as yet another black man in the United States dies under the weight of white oppression? After all, the police found that Mr. Cooper was not at fault, and he walked away from the incident without any visible wounds. While racist sticks and stones are still breaking bones, do racist words really matter?

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Creating a Safety Net: Preventing Physician Suicide

By Christine Moutier, MD The facts about mental health and suicide in the academic medicine community are sobering. Physicians and trainees have higher rates of burnout, depressive symptoms, and suicide risk than the general population. A 2015 meta-analysis of 17,500 residents over 50 years estimated that 28.8 percent of resident physicians experienced significant depressive symptoms. Another prospective intern cohort study found that 24 percent of interns developed suicidal thoughts within three months of starting their internships. Yet, ironically, doctors are less likely than other members of the public to seek mental health treatment. I became interested in the subject of physician suicide as a psychiatry resident at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine (UCSD), when a fourth-year medical student I knew took his life. I was shocked. How could his internal suffering or turmoil have gone unnoticed? As I progressed in my own career, eventually becoming a of psychiatry and assistant dean for student affairs and medical education, I increasingly noticed that mental health and the concept of self-care as a vital component of being a good physician weren’t truly integrated. Speaking up about psychosocial realities in our patients, let alone in ourselves, wasn’t always a welcome part of the lexicon. Why do physicians have high rates of distress? Physicians have traditionally lived within a culture of silence when it comes to mental health. Loathe to draw attention to self-perceived weakness, we commonly cloak experiences of anxiety, worry, or shame and carry out our mission. We rationalize significant distress as part of our identity as physicians. While a certain amount of bucking up and forging through is adaptive, this coping strategy can go too far, ignoring serious deterioration of mental health.

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Wellness Wednesday | Volume 2, Issue 7 1 Empathy - Best Speech Of All Time New Raffle!

By Simon Sinek Continue to click on “Return Receipt Requested” to have the chance to be entered in the next raffle, This speech shows us that, as leaders, we can either rule on November 17th, for a $100 DoorDash gift card. with an iron fist or decide to help people, and which way we go can have a serious impact on performances. Everyone loves food. Especially when it’s delivered.

The first weekly winner that will be entered in the raffle for the prize is: Click here to listen to this speech. Zainab Shahid

How Sharing Your Could Improve Your Relationships

The Philadelphia Inquirer By Mark Blagrove and

When you wake up from a strange or particularly memorable , how likely are you to share it? Maybe you might tell your partner about it over breakfast, or text a friend to tell them the details and ponder its meaning.

Research shows that about 15% of dreams are shared – mainly with romantic partners, friends, and relatives. And if you don’t share your dreams, you might want to start thinking about it, as research also suggests that it can help to improve relationship intimacy.

This echoes recent research at the Laboratory, which shows that sharing your dreams and listening to other people’s dreams can help to improve your empathy levels. Indeed, when people share dreams with each other, the person discussing their dream significantly increases their empathy toward the person they are sharing the dream with.

There is much evidence that sleep benefits the processing of important and emotional memories.And we often dream of our waking-life emotional experiences and concerns. So some researchers have suggested that our dreams have a role in, or reflect, the neural processing of memories in sleep.

The Sleep Laboratory has undertaken many lab studies on the relationship of dreams to memory and emotional processing. But it also looks at the effects of the dreamer discussing dream content and relating it to waking life.

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