I was listening to the radio last week about a teenager who'd suffered serious depression, and her aspiration when she grew up was to be a counsellor / psychiatrists so that she could help other people with similar problems. It's not an unusual aspiration and not the first time I've heard it, earlier in the year I heard a nutritionist explain how her early anorexia led her to her current career path.
My gut reaction is that people who choose a career for these sort of reasons are going to be carrying a load of emotional baggage that may interfere with their objective diagnosis and treatment of the people they want to help. Alternatively, I might just have a naturally negative disposition and in reality it may mean that they have a far more empathic relationship and a greater insight into a client's problem.

So what are other peoples view? Anyone in caring profession know if there is consensus of opinion?

If the teenager made it into a counselling career, she'd be subject to so much clinical supervision during training and afterwards that her own problems should be well under control & possibly her career choice would be a healthy choice for her. Bit more difficult from the dietetics point of view, although one medic I know says all dietitians have an eating disorder of one form or another!

I work in diabetes care, and there is significantly more people with diabetes (or close family experiences of the condition) working in diabetes care than you'd expect from the general population – only on the odd occasion have I come across someone with diabetes whose own experiences have blurred their judgement and led to a possible professionalism issue.

plenty of problems can be overcome, and empathy is no bad thing.

Given how common depression and mental health issues are, and how many of us might be touched by them at some point in our lives, if you restricted the caring proffessions to practitioners who'd never personally experienced such things then you'd be fishing in a pretty small pond.

But looking to teenagers in particular – kids make their career choices on two things – what they are good at in school and the people they meet who they want to be like. I didn't follow a path based on what I was best at at school (science) because I never met, and still have never met, a scientist I wanted to be like/live like. Your depressed teenager will have met one or more councellors, been appreciative of what they've done and seen it as life choice that would suit them.

Good point, I hadn't considered that one.

I was hammered more days of the week than I wasn't, locked in my bedroom for full weekends, humiliated in public, oh bollocks, all sorts of antics at the hands of my dad, left by my mum when I was 9 (there was 7 of us so I wasn't the sole brunt of his fun).
Anyway, I now work part time for a charity that emergency rehouses families in distress from domestic abuse, neighbour abuse, witness protection (occasionally), that kind of stuff. I did it full time but like all charities, they are struggling and can't take on any more staff so I was working 16 hour days, 7 days per week and living in more than I was at home. I couldn't keep it up.
I agree entirely about carrying emotional baggage but I make it my absolute policy to keep my thoughts to myself. The adults and certainly the children don't need me to tell them how crap it was for me, they know, they're going through it and to be honest, it's my revenge for what life was like for me. I spent Thursday last week on a park with three youngsters playing pooh sticks in the stream, hide and seek, eating ice creams (I bought three each – they weren't hungry for their tea for some reason :-} ) and at the end of each day that I do stuff like that, I think of my mum and dad smirk to myself.
It is possible to make it work for the best.

one medic I know says all dietitians have an eating disorder of one form or another!

I've not. I got into dietetics as I wanted to work in healthcare and had an interest in nutrition from sport. A few people I've worked/studied with did have a history of disordered eating behaviours though.

I've been working in smoking cessation for a couple of years and am confident that having no history of smoking myself allows me to remain objective with my patients. However, one of my colleagues did smoke in the past, and is simply mindful to not let her experience influence her patients' behaviour.

As an alternative point, at least it's nice to hear that a teenager doesn't list her career aspirations as 'being famous'.

As a 'service user' in my late teens and early twenties.. I can say with some insider knowledge that is unavailable to researchers that sometimes prior experience is an essential qualification for people working in the caring professions..

Having been in the 'extremely severe' section of service users.. and having formed interesting and trusting bonds with others in similar circumstances.. most of 'us' agreed that having a very well educated and sometimes well meaning but usually relatively quite sheltered 'expert' (please excuse all the inverted commas.. ) telling you that they 'understand' and 'know how you feel'… is not a good start to forming a bond of trust that will aid the search for a path to recovery..

a streetwise drug addled psychotic teenager does not want to listen to a guy who went to prep school… then boarding school til he was 18… then to oxbridge and then med school and then straight to work.. preach a one-sided and heavily distorted view of the world and it's complexities.. especially if you've got all of hells demons screaming down at you at 140mph..

and it gets much bleaker when you take into account that the oxbridge guy OR the guy with the first hand real life experience can only ever at best be trying to prevent danger in the worst case scenario and be attempting to minimise resource usage in the less severe cases..

I'm not bitter (honest!)and I respect the help that me and others like me got at that time… but it was the help from unexpected corners of the community over the next 15 years that actually put me back into society as a useful and active member..

Thanks for the replies!
Lot's of very positive stuff there!

I think I would prefer to deal with helpers who had at least some idea of what any problem actually feels like and awareness of its related difficulties.

Continuing the idea that all Psychiatrists are nuts ! Exposure to the profession leads people to develop an interest, I'm not convinced thats a good thing.

This was explained to me at first year Psych classes at Uni. There was one woman in my class who bought along her dolly and insisted it had it's own seat and that people addressed it formally.

Sadly, first year Psych was all mathematics (still at that time desperate to prove itself as a proper science) so that was me out.

Personally – I would like the person treating me if I had a mental illness to be 100% verifiably stone cold sane. Otherwise how do they know how sane you are ? Which of course leads one to ask – who is actually sane anyway ??

In my yoof I suffered from serious sex addiction syndrome.

Now I have recovered I am particularly interested in helping young women who may have the same problem

I feel my early experience of sex addiction (did I say I have completely recovered?) will be of enormous help in assisting young women to put this awful problem behind them

Young women suffering from sex addiction syndrome are most welcome to contact me (email in profile)

I feel I am well placed to help them

I've not. I got into dietetics as I wanted to work in healthcare and had an interest in nutrition from sport. A few people I've worked/studied with did have a history of disordered eating behaviours though.

A smiley should have accompanied my statement 😆

I had a problem with masturbation…

I had a problem with masturbation…

You need to get together with eldridge then before he gets a sex discrimination suit filed against him..

Everyone has emotional baggage of one form or other.

often the case though isn't it? Dentists have usually had loads of work done as kids, opticians always wear glasses, vets have pets as kids. obviously there is a big difference between inspiration through an experieince like orthodontics and insoiration through mental health issues etc, but we have quite a few staff members who chnged career off the back of seeing friends/ family die/ get injured and feeling redundant through not knowing any first aid. mind you, i never got much pocket money, so maybe I should have become a bank manager or something?