Stigma and prejudice about mental ill health (or disability generally) is a big problem everywhere - I am disabled, and I've experienced it myself. In addition to the disability I was born with I also have a history of mental illness (eating disorders and anxiety) that I'm very careful about disclosing. It doesn't really affect me now so I have no reason to talk about it, but I think deliberately hiding disability or illness is even more detrimental than the stigma, as it stops you from getting help, and in the end it just perpetuates the prejudice if you treat it as if it's something to be ashamed of.
I think in recent years the medical profession has been making a better effort to address the mental health needs of doctors. A while ago I read a very moving article in the
British Medical Journal by a doctor (a psychiatrist, no less)
who suffers from psychotic depression herself and has actually been a patient in the hospital where she now works. There is also the Doctors' Support Network, which was founded by doctors with mental health problems. Attitudes within the profession are changing, slowly, and there are reasons to be hopeful.
For anyone who is considering going into healthcare and who has a mental health difficulty, I suggest looking at the
Time to Change campaign. It's an anti-stigma campaign and it's not perfect (I think their attitude to mental distress can be a bit too medicalised at times) but it's done a lot of work to challenge discrimination and get people thinking more positively about mental health. They always need volunteers, which would count as relevant experience for a lot of healthcare and medicine courses, and is perhaps a good way for people who don't feel too confident about their mental health history to get the better of worries over what people might think of them.
There used to be a brilliant blog by an adult/general nurse with quite severe mental health problems, but she shut it down. I wish it was still up so that I could link you to it - she blogged through all sorts of things and gave a real insight into how she coped with her illness while being a nurse on a busy ward. Her colleagues seemed brilliantly supportive of her. Here is another favourite blog of mine,
by a former mental health nursing student who has bipolar disorder (her story is less positive as she was not well-supported on nursing placement, and eventually left). There is no guarantee of success in nursing with a history of mental illness, but there's no guarantee of success in nursing anyway; plenty of people without any medical problems drop out for one reason or another. All you can do is what everybody should do - test out whether it's for you through some voluntary work or shadowing, get your grades, and then give it your best shot. Best of luck with everything.
