In Reply to Kandola and Minhas

I would like to thank Kandola and Minhas for their incredibly kind words regarding my article and their individual and institutional mental health efforts and activism. It is truly heart-warming to know this much-needed culture change is happening not only here in the United States but also “across the pond” in London and around the world. I must thank the authors for bringing the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) program to my attention through their comments. The MHFA United States website 1 immediately caught my attention with its declaration, “Let’s make Mental Health First Aid as common as CPR.” I love this statement because it emphasizes the critical importance of mental health along with the essential role it needs to play in our training as physicians. Implementation of this course in the curriculum of medical education would be a direct response to my call for schools to “create a culture that normalizes the need for self-care and includes vulnerability as part of training in professionalism.” 2 I strongly endorse their urging of leaders in medical education to include this course as a requirement for its students. Furthermore, I encourage residency training programs to make MHFA a requirement for its trainees as well. Just as attaining certification in Basic Life Support and Advanced Care Life Support is a requirement for most providers involved in patient care, so too should MHFA. Since the issue of suicide among physicians was first documented in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 1903, 3 we as a medical community have not adequately committed to ending this crisis. Now is the time. Leaders in medical education, this is our chance to bring forth the change that our profession desperately needs. Do not miss this opportunity to save the lives of students and colleagues

Certification · Continuing medical education · Curriculum · EXPOSE · Health care · Mental health · Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout · Innovations in Medical Education · Medical Education and Admissions

• We Burn Out, We Break, We Die

  Christopher Thomas Veal•Academic Medicine•2021

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