Hello ! My name is Laetitia Amar and I am currently a third year medical student at McGill University. 

I first became interested in mental health when I was in my first year of Medicine. As part of the program, we had to shadow a family doctor during our first year. I was assigned to a doctor who worked outside of Montreal in a First Nation reserve. I met patients battling with depression, substance abuse, traumatic childhood and extreme poverty. I felt very privileged to have the opportunity to work with these patients, establish relations, and be taught patience, trust and resilience. 

 

Since I started my clinical rotation in August, I decided to join the CMH group at the same time in hope to learn how to advocate for people in need and which resources are available to them. 

I had the opportunity to meet with students from many different programs. This made me understand the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, which strongly improves access and quality of mental health services by allowing us to have different perspectives.

 

Although I still am not sure of which specialty I would like to pursue, I know I would like to incorporate mental health in practice.