Rahael Gupta had good reason to take a hiatus from studying medicine.

The Oregon native, then 26, experienced depression so severe that the high-achieving pupil — who earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at Stanford and Columbia universities — almost took her own life.

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Withdrawn and fatigued, the woman who once ran marathons and kept an active social calendar one night considered stepping in front of an oncoming bus.

It wasn’t the scenario a self-described “optimistic and fun-loving” person thought she’d ever encounter.

“Depression was like an opportunistic infection that took me over,” says Gupta, whose issues began after failing a course in her second year at the University of Michigan Medical School. “I was sad, I lacked confidence, I was exhausted.

“And I tried to push through until it became obvious that simply wasn’t possible.”

A seven-month break to receive therapy and medication helped her feel stronger and more grounded.

After returning to school in 2017, though, Gupta soon realized that a choice rooted in self-care could have professional consequences.

“I spoke with a surgeon who is absolutely wonderful,” Gupta recalls. “But he told me: ‘As someone who values wellness I think what you’re doing is great, but I have to be honest — if a student on their residency application said they were depressed, I would think twice about giving them an interview.’”

A recent U-M study found that many doctors are reluctant to report or treat their mental health issues — a byproduct of some states’ rules that require physicians to report any mental diagnosis (no matter how mild or in the past) to medical licensing boards.

Several other faculty advised Gupta to vaguely cite health problems to explain her resume gap.

Although she knows their intentions were good, the 28-year-old chooses not to hide: “That’s a vestige of stigma.”

It’s what compelled her to write and film a video featuring more than 30 U-M doctors, staff and students reading a first-person script based on Gupta’s own experience with depression.

The effort, titled Physicians Connected, puts a public spotlight on her once-private emotions — ones that moved some participants to tears when reading the script aloud.

Gupta, who studied narrative medicine at Columbia, has also put her thoughts on paper by publishing a JAMA editorial this month about being depressed while in medical school.

“As an aspiring physician, I may be committing self-sabotage by telling my story,” she writes in the essay. “I admit openly that I am just as vulnerable to the elements of life as are my future patients, hoping that others will do the same.”

Both efforts buck façades of toughness or perfectionism that many students may feel compelled to display — and they offer hope, says Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D., a U-M associate professor of psychiatry and Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg Professor of Depression and Neurosciences.

“The level of struggle is at epidemic levels,” says Sen, who has conducted extensive research on medical school and mental health, “but because of the culture of silence, people feel like they’re the only ones going through it.

“This is an innovative way to break through that culture and help us talk about this critical topic.”