Personal Application Statement by Fasika Aberra
Long sleepless nights by my mother’s bedside marked one of my most painful childhood memories. Being the eldest child in a family of five, my mother always relied on me for her emotional needs, as my father was away most of the time. She would wake me up in the middle of the night and ask me to rub her feet, hold her hands or feel her heartbeat. I recall the worst night I had as a thirteen year old: she woke me up and slid a piece of paper in my hands, her will, in case she died before sunrise. I was absolutely dumbfounded and did not know how to react to her perverse fear of dying except for reading consoling verses from the Bible to her. However, deep inside I knew that there had to be something that the wonders of medicine could do to heal my mother of her perplexing fears.
My fascination with medicine, especially the mental healthcare dimension, started growing early in my high school career. Psychopathology was one of the most interesting topics in my high school introductory psychology class. It helped me find the answers to a number of questions that were lurking in my mind ever since I was a little girl. My mother’s inexplicable behavior and many other mysteries rationalized by “evil spirit” in my culture, clearly have a feasible scientific explanation of which I was never aware. In my culture, people suffering from mental illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia, mood or anxiety disorders are considered possessed by the “devil” and they are committed to church for exorcism, rather than taken to the hospital. I also knew that if anyone outside my family found out about my mother’s emotional instability, she would have then been a candidate for “exorcism.”
Looking at my mother’s everyday suffering made me search for desperate measures. It also made me think of others suffering from mental illness who were traditionally misdiagnosed and in need of medical treatment. I wished for the ability to figure out the science behind the human brain and the means to make my dream of healing my mother come true. At the time, my knowledge from the psychology course helped me learn about my mother’s condition. Her difficulty sleeping, loss of hope in the future, and fear of being left alone confirmed to me that she had clinical depression. My father and I finally decided to search for the hospitals that offered mental healthcare. However, we were disappointed to find out that there were only a handful of psychiatrists throughout Ethiopia, which didn’t give us many options. She finally received help from one of the psychiatrists and learned to cope with her feelings better.
My compassion to help my mother along with my keen interest in the treatment of mental illnesses launched my internal drive to create a future in healthcare where mental illnesses are properly diagnosed and treated. I have learned that I cannot achieve my goals by solely becoming a doctor who cures diseases…I must also become a physician who heals. I have come to realize this in everything from my shadowing and volunteering experiences to my clinical research. While I enjoyed having a thorough understanding of the mechanics of the human body through my research on the early detection of kidney diseases, I remind myself that it was my voice and touch that eased my mother’s struggle with depression. I have been able to reinforce this through observing the compassion for patient care from the nurses in the hospital wards to the transporters in different units while volunteering. More importantly, my shadowing experiences with a variety of physicians have helped me to appreciate the wide spectrum of challenges faced by doctors.
I grew up in an underdeveloped nation where healthcare doesn’t assume a prominent place. Now, seeing the way medicine can make a difference in people’s lives has shown me the importance of training culturally diverse physicians who can identify with problems in different communities. Although I do not render any judgment in the traditional ways of treating mental illnesses in Ethiopia, I wish to offer an option for an advanced approach of their methods. Because of my cultural background and life experiences, I believe that once equipped with adequate medical training, I will be well positioned to share that important information both here and abroad.
Read the students’ personal application statements:
Lindsay Brown
Shaun Patel
Ronald Romero