Probing elevated suicide risk among physicians

  • On-the-job stress could also be a bigger suicide risk factor for physicians, according to the study. A physician who commits suicide is far less likely to have had a recent death of a friend or family member or a crisis contribute to the suicide but much more likely to have a job problem contribute. Gold says this finding suggests that a physician's identity is strongly linked to the job role and physicians may be particularly vulnerable to problems at work.
The U-M study follows up work from another U-M Family Medicine study that addressed risk factors for stress and burnout among medical students. "This paints a more detailed picture of external events and risk factors in a physician's life before a suicide, rather than just looking at a death certificate," Gold says. "We"ve seen a number of studies now that show a high rate of anxiety, depression and burnout among both medical students and physicians but we haven"t done very much to develop programs to reduce or treat these risk factors and to increase mental health-seeking among physicians," Gold adds. "There needs to be greater effort to address the stigma, under-diagnosis and treatment of depression among physicians and understand how we can reduce the stress related to work. We need to make mental health treatment more available, safe and confidential." Additional authors: Thomas L.Schwenk, M.D., former chair of U-M's Department of Family Medicine, now dean of the University of Nevada School of Medicine and vice president of the University of Nevada, Reno, Division of Health Sciences; and Ananda Sen, Ph.D., research associate professor in the U-M Department of Family Medicine. Reference: "Details on suicide among U.S. physicians: data from the National Violent Death Reporting System," General Hospital Psychiatry (2012) . The original University of Michigan Health System press release may be found here.