Red Flags

 Perspective/Opinion

From the 5/14/2021 newsletter

Perspective/Opinion

Red Flags

Margaret (Meg) Lieb, MS

Ms. Lieb is the current medical student representative for MCW’s Suicide Prevention Council and a co-founder of the council’s inaugural program, Seeking Peer Outreach (SPO). In this issue, she reflects on how her past gives life to her vision for future of SPO …

I remember trembling in a bustling coffee shop as I numbed the buzz around me to delicately lay each word in place. I was clenching every muscle in my body to contain the explosions in my chest vibrating my fingertips. I was eighteen, and I was writing my first personal statement. As with every personal statement since I was firmly instructed to “address [my] red flags.” My caveat: it is impossible to explain my red flags without also disclosing my most painful, darkest, personal secrets.

How do you address a big, red, domestic violence charge without sharing that it was the first time I tried to fight back after a year of abuse? How do you justify enduring an entire year of abuse without conveying I intervened in his suicide the year prior and was terrified for his life? How do you fend off assumptions about my judgment without explaining it was my first love, and I simply did not know better? How do you describe the ways it was formative without reliving every traumatic memory and its sequelae?

After nearly ten years of writing and re-writing my sharpest pain and deepest shame for various admissions committees, I have yet to craft a different answer.

However, time gifted me the hindsight to reflect on ways I grew into my red flags, in ways, driving my purpose. For instance, I was nominated to sit as the student representative for MCW’s Suicide Prevention Council (SPC) last year. One of my mentors challenged me to imagine the intricacies of a culture in medical education where we would not be forced to question, “When is it safe to be me?” primarily when applied to well-being and mental suffering.

As I reflected on this concept and connected it to my own experience, I realized it never was safe for me. However, with each rendition disclosing my history, I grew from tolerating my forced vulnerability to comfort to strength in my vulnerability. This concept of ‘strength in vulnerability’ has been integral as I helped develop SPC’s first initiative, Seeking Peer Outreach (SPO). How do you breathe strength into brilliant, high-functioning individuals, who are also struggling to dress in the morning, to be vulnerable enough to seek help?

Make help active and accessible 

Our approach to this: make it easy and make it normal. In applying this to SPO, I’ve called it “active accessibility.” Active because we are placing the responsibility of getting support away from a person potentially suffering and, instead, giving it to everyone else in the community by setting the expectation of actively and regularly reaching out. Accessible because we considered existing barriers to requesting or receiving help and have streamlined circumventive processes.

We are augmenting active support via a subset of individuals identified by others in the community as being particularly approachable and empathetic. This group goes through additional training, is equipped with various resources to share, is tasked with checking in with all individuals regularly, and displays a specific version of the SPO logo as a silent signal. The signal conveys the pledge to share their vulnerability, support, resources, and confidentiality for anyone who may need it at any time. 

Additionally, we are enhancing accessibility through an innovative anonymous reporting platform for anyone burdened with barriers to revealing their identity. Each SPO logo will be an embedded with a QR code directly linked to an encrypted submission page. Any submission will go to the SPO peer support team, who will be able to respond accordingly. Further, every person will be provided a pin displaying the QR code and encouraged to keep it on their MCW badge. Therefore, every member at MCW will carry an anonymous means of support with them at all times.

We are not alone

When I joined the SPC, I knew there were very few people in my life who understood what I had been through; thus, I was sure no one at my institution could personally relate to my lived experience: a lonely burden to acknowledge. 

A year later, I am astounded and inspired by how wrong I was. As we selected leaders for the SPO pilot program at MCW’s satellite campus in Central Wisconsin, I was adamant that our leadership be committed to being the best example of the program’s mission. In response, a few weeks ago, I sat with next year’s selected SPO leaders, composed of 25% of the Central Wisconsin M1 class, faculty, and staff. Each person shared their personal dedication for SPO by disclosing their own big, red, scary secrets. Many secrets that were strikingly similar to my own. It was a powerful meeting that served as a beacon of hope, a seed for compassionate collaboration, and the ribbon-cutting for strength in vulnerability. 

Most notably, it would not have been possible without the influential faculty members who take extra steps to help their colleagues and students feel safe in their vulnerability. Further, I would not have been able to co-lead the formation of SPO without the same faculty who empowered my voice and simply left the door open. 

I couldn’t be more grateful for them or the skills they granted me to pass the torch for those to come.

Margaret (Meg) Lieb, MS is a second-year medical student at MCW-Central Wisconsin. She serves as the medical student representative to MCW’s Suicide Prevention Council.