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Fighting the hidden illness: Stress, anxiety and depression in dentistry – Barry Oulton

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  Posted by: Dental Design      15th November 2018

Practising dentist, qualified coach and trainer, Barry Oulton boasts an enviable portfolio of achievements. Here, the master practitioner in neuro-linguistic programming shares his story about his experience with mental stress.

Congratulations to all of us in the profession. Consistently, for over a decade, we have ranked second in the league table. ‘Have we?’, you might ask. ‘Well done us?’ However, this is the league table you ought not to be ranked in at all: suicide. We, as a profession, remain an industry with one of the highest rates of suicide in the country. We also do really well in the divorce league (sorry for my own contribution to this one, team) and although I am not aware of statistics for drug and alcohol use/abuse in the profession, I personally reckon that we are pretty high up there, as well. From my own experience, some years ago I was ‘self-medicating’ with Chablis after a hard week at work and at life, and I’m sure many of you can relate to that.

Having been a dentist for 25 years and trained in neuro- linguistic programming (NLP) and coaching, it has crossed my mind, at times, why it is exactly that we are so high up in these sad statistics and what some of the contributing factors may be.

Now, you may jump to some quick assumptions that the answers to my ponderings are somewhat obvious. However, I believe that there may be some additional factors to consider that weigh in heavily alongside the stress of the job, pressure from regulators, fitness to practise fears, financial worries and the other things we see on social media groups, hear from colleagues and even feel ourselves.

Mental health seems to be the ‘on-trend’ topic right now, and yet, I haven’t seen or read anything that offers some advice in coping with things ‘in the moment’.

My own journey into ‘mental health’ started 13 years ago. I was head over heels in love with my beautiful wife, had two young, amazing daughters and was running my own private dental practice. I had become a mentor to dentists for cosmetics and smile makeovers, and business was booming.

Then my world fell apart, or at least at that time it felt as if it had. I must put it into perspective – because no-one died or contracted a life-threatening disease – but still, for me it was catastrophic.

All at once I found out that my wife had embarked on a two-year affair with a friend of mine, and right under my nose. He would appear at our home under the guise that he was busy in the midst of designing my website, but what he was really hoping, was that I wouldn’t be home, and my wife would be. (Your imagination can carry that story on!)

The experience left me feeling cuckolded, embarrassed and belittled, yet just as I suddenly found myself single, as the father of two young girls, I realised that I needed to put on a brave face, protect my children, run my business and be the happy-go-lucky chap I’d always been for my patients.

It was then that it began. I started to have panic attacks. Usually it would happen at night, I would wake up in a cold sweat, heart beating out of my chest and scared that I would lose my girls; after all, in my head, I had already ‘lost’ one.

I felt like I had nowhere to turn for help and I didn’t know what to do about them, and so, at the age of 34, I would call my mum for support.

It turned out that my mum had had panic attacks when my grandma had passed away and seemingly, my dad had also had them before I was born. It emerged that this sort of thing is more common than I had previously thought.

Even though I felt a little solace in the fact that I wasn’t alone and that this was my body’s reaction to an acute episode of stress, I still found it incredibly difficult to find a solution to the pain and worry of the anxiety I felt and the panic attacks that often woke me up and left me feeling like a helpless child; frightened, lost and isolated. And then, of course, there was the weird guilt of feeling like I shouldn’t be so weak. After all I’m a businessman, professional, father and role model.

I visited a therapist once a week, every week, for 18 months after that (although, in many respects, in my case it probably helped keep the stress and worry going), before I discovered NLP and found much faster ways of coping and dealing with the stress. I achieved in one hour what 18 months had failed to deliver.

My story of getting out of that dismal place at last started to develop a happy ending. Years later I hadn’t had even one panic attack. My girls were now beautiful young women, I had met my best friend, soul mate and married her, and we had two amazing sons. It was here that I experienced another, yet different, reaction to mental stress.

It came after weeks of ups and downs, emergency surgeries, ICU, multiple trips to Liverpool and then, late one Tuesday evening, a phone call to say that all was good, and ‘they’ would be moving my mum closer to home to recover. It was a short-lived release. No less than 12 hours later I received a call from my brother while out buying my morning coffee, to say that my mum had just had a catastrophic fourth bleed in the brain and doctors had withdrawn all treatment. “She’s about to die”, he said. “You’ve got about three hours to come and say goodbye, so you’d better hurry up”.

I live four hours away, so it was going to be near impossible. As it turns out, our experience of ‘palliative care’ resulted in several days of additional pain and anguish for everyone involved.

Over the next few months after the funeral I didn’t notice the slow decline in my mood, optimism, playfulness and mental health. This time there weren’t any panic attacks, or any other acute indicators. These are an easier marker of something going on and yet the slow, progressive decline is something that it often takes someone else to notice and help with.

My amazing wife was the rock that I needed, alongside 50mg of sertraline daily as a ‘mood leveller’, as my GP put it.

I bare my soul on this page, not to impress, but to impress upon you the fact that I am just your average, fairly normal bloke, who has now come to realise that at some point in life, some form of mental struggle is likely to touch each and every one of us. Until it touched me,
I looked at depression rather as if it was a choice and a weakness, rather than a symptom of something deeper. I have learnt that whilst I have some knowledge and skills in coping with the acute episodes of stress, there’s a lot more needed for the slower, progressive decline.

I have a series of articles about NLP, communication, sales and mental health within dentistry, where I lay out my own experiences, inform readers of what worked for me, what didn’t, and invite you to explore that which I endorse, and add value by giving me your own thoughts.

For those of you who may jump down my throat about NLP being a pseudoscience, something unproven and supposedly often discredited, I offer this: I learnt NLP after my marriage breakdown, I learnt skills that I use to this day that have helped me, my family, my business and my patients. I just know that it works, and to-date, it works for everyone who attends my courses.

So, if you disagree with me about NLP, I invite you to put down The Probe and forget about reading my forthcoming articles. May I suggest, however, that you keep these articles in a drawer somewhere to hand, because statistically, at some point in your life, you’re going to want to read them to help your own mental position or someone you care about.


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