The Louise Tebboth Foundation (LTF) is delighted to be able to announce the award of its first significant grant to promote the mental well-being of doctors. The Foundation, working in conjunction with the NHS Practitioner Health Programme and NHS GP Health Service, has agreed to provide £10,000 over two years to support the establishment and ongoing activities of the new NHS Practitioner Volunteer and User Voices Network.
The Network will bring doctors at varying stages of recovery from mental illness and addiction together with service providers, commissioners and charitable organisations in order to give voice to the experiences of the practitioner-patients, enable them to help shape the development of support services, raise awareness of the key issues affecting the management, support and processes for doctors who become unwell and to explore the gaps in service provision and barriers to seeking help.
Dr Clare Gerada, Medical Director of the Practitioner Health Programme, welcomed news of the award, saying:
“The Foundation’s generous and significant contribution to support the Volunteer Network is greatly appreciated and we look forward to working closely with the LTF to progress this very important work improving the experience of doctors with mental health and addiction issues.”
Gary Marson, who founded the LTF in memory of his wife, Louise Tebboth, a London GP who died by suicide in 2015 at the age of 40, commented,
“I’m absolutely thrilled that after three years hard work establishing the charity we are now in a position to begin to be able to make a positive contribution to the mental wellbeing of medical practitioners. Sadly levels of suicide within the medical profession remain stubbornly high and if we can help in saving the life of even just one doctor it will serve as a wonderful and practical memorial to my amazing wife Louise, enabling her to continue even now to do what she always wanted more than anything else – to help others in need. I would like to thank everybody who has helped us to reach this point for their generous support, not least the friends and family of Joe Kaczmarczyk, a 28-year-old doctor in Manchester who took his life in November 2016.”