Physician suicide

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TheDBird90

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I know medical school is difficult, but it can truely drive someone over the edge. I just watched an informative video (http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2016/03/why-doctors-kill-themselves.html) about it. I've also heard that 9 out of 10 doctors don't recommend the profession to other people, and about 400 physicians kill themselves each year (from http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/806779-overview - don't know if it's changed now). Now even if I could, I don't know if I would want to go to med school; I guess it's partly because I'm a pessimist, and due to this bad news. And I would want to learn everything, but there's simply not enough time. Does medical education need to change somehow? I just can't believe these things happen.

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How many suicide threads do we need?
 
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How many suicide threads do we need?

I've seen a lot lately. I guess people are trying to bring awareness.

I'm the type of medical student that will tell people when I'm upset. Or feeling inadequate. Or feeling depressed. The fact that so many classmates have told me they "admire" that about me just proves that a lot of them probably feel the same way but are just afraid to say so.
 
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I know medical school is difficult, but it can truely drive someone over the edge. I just watched an informative video (http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2016/03/why-doctors-kill-themselves.html) about it. I've also heard that 9 out of 10 doctors don't recommend the profession to other people, and about 400 physicians kill themselves each year (from http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/806779-overview - don't know if it's changed now). Now even if I could, I don't know if I would want to go to med school; I guess it's partly because I'm a pessimist, and due to this bad news. And I would want to learn everything, but there's simply not enough time. Does medical education need to change somehow? I just can't believe these things happen.
Physicians don't attempt suicide at any rate higher than the general population, they've just got higher completion rates, because obviously. Physician suicide is awful, but there is nothing inherent in the profession that makes people attempt suicide more often, we've just got the physiological knowledge and planning abilities to pull it off better than the average person attempting to take their life.
 
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Physicians don't attempt suicide at any rate higher than the general population, they've just got higher completion rates, because obviously. Physician suicide is awful, but there is nothing inherent in the profession that makes people attempt suicide more often, we've just got the physiological knowledge and planning abilities to pull it off better than the average person attempting to take their life.

Source please?

I think there are a lot of factors inherent in the profession that makes people attempt suicide more often.
 
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I know medical school is difficult, but it can truely drive someone over the edge. I just watched an informative video (http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2016/03/why-doctors-kill-themselves.html) about it. I've also heard that 9 out of 10 doctors don't recommend the profession to other people, and about 400 physicians kill themselves each year (from http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/806779-overview - don't know if it's changed now). Now even if I could, I don't know if I would want to go to med school; I guess it's partly because I'm a pessimist, and due to this bad news. And I would want to learn everything, but there's simply not enough time. Does medical education need to change somehow? I just can't believe these things happen.

Im sorry but I call BS on that 9/10 number.


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They may not recommend being a physician for separate reasons. Honestly, if I could go back I'd just be a PA, NP or CRNA. It's much less work, time, and money. The pay ends up being pretty high (especially CRNA) with better hours


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Pro-tip: To avoid suicide, dont kill yourself.
 
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Physicians don't attempt suicide at any rate higher than the general population, they've just got higher completion rates, because obviously. Physician suicide is awful, but there is nothing inherent in the profession that makes people attempt suicide more often, we've just got the physiological knowledge and planning abilities to pull it off better than the average person attempting to take their life.
Source plz so I can see the numbers
 
Source plz so I can see the numbers
It's been discussed ad nauseam. Statistics are in three older threads, I'm not burning an hour of the last month I have before boards looking digging through SDN for other people, I just don't have time for it.
 
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It's been discussed ad nauseam. Statistics are in three older threads, I'm not burning an hour of the last month I have before boards looking digging through SDN for other people, I just don't have time for it.

Lol no offense, but if you have board exams coming up, do you think you should be on SDN arguing about suicide prevalence?


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There was a similar thread to this on this forum.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...ssary-stress-on-med-students-doctors.1168282/
One post that stuck out to me was someone saying that depression and suicide rates drop drastically after residency training is finished to match the non-physician population. This makes sense to me since you have a lot more control over your schedule as an attending and I expect the people who continue working resident-level hours after training mostly self-select for that kind of life, but it would be good to see some actual data on it.
 
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I guess I quoted it wrong: 9 out of 10 don't recommend healthcare as a profession. http://www.thedoctors.com/TDC/PressRoom/PressContent/CON_ID_004671

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Source please?

I think there are a lot of factors inherent in the profession that makes people attempt suicide more often.
Agree - I haven't seen the recent data, so I'm hoping MJ or someone can cite some recent sources [because I'm too lazy to do it myself]. I know the old data suggested that physicians were on the order of other professionals (healthcare and comparable fields). But, some of that research was 10-20 years old. I'm not necessarily saying I think it's different now. But, I do think it's possible that things have changed enough. And, we do know data about depression during residency. And, enrollment in physician health programs.

FWIW, I follow Dr. Wible on social media / TEDTalks. She seems a little bit kooky at times, but at least she's passionate and allowing for more dialogue on the topic. Among the issues of validity of the physician suicide data, there is a bias to not report unexpected deaths as suicides.
 
It's been discussed ad nauseam. Statistics are in three older threads, I'm not burning an hour of the last month I have before boards looking digging through SDN for other people, I just don't have time for it.

There was a similar thread to this on this forum.
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...ssary-stress-on-med-students-doctors.1168282/
One post that stuck out to me was someone saying that depression and suicide rates drop drastically after residency training is finished to match the non-physician population. This makes sense to me since you have a lot more control over your schedule as an attending and I expect the people who continue working resident-level hours after training mostly self-select for that kind of life, but it would be good to see some actual data on it.
Awww. That thread's like 6 pages long. Ain't nobody got time for that.
 
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That 9/10 number that doctors wouldn't recommend a career in health care is bull.

And all of you dummies fell for it.

It was run by an Medical Malpractice Insurance Company asking what their insureds thought of the future in healthcare in anticipation of Obamacare in 2016.

Medicine is an honorable profession. I hate SDN
 
That 9/10 number that doctors wouldn't recommend a career in health care is bull.

And all of you dummies fell for it.

It was run by an Medical Malpractice Insurance Company asking what their insureds thought of the future in healthcare in anticipation of Obamacare in 2016.

(A) Medicine is an honorable profession. (B) I hate SDN
(C) A goodly number of physicians still wouldn't recommend going into healthcare (somewhere between "some" and "most" but not "nearly all").

A, B, & C can all be true. (For me, at least, I accept all 3 as truths)
 
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Agree - I haven't seen the recent data, so I'm hoping MJ or someone can cite some recent sources [because I'm too lazy to do it myself]. I know the old data suggested that physicians were on the order of other professionals (healthcare and comparable fields). But, some of that research was 10-20 years old. I'm not necessarily saying I think it's different now. But, I do think it's possible that things have changed enough. And, we do know data about depression during residency. And, enrollment in physician health programs.

FWIW, I follow Dr. Wible on social media / TEDTalks. She seems a little bit kooky at times, but at least she's passionate and allowing for more dialogue on the topic. Among the issues of validity of the physician suicide data, there is a bias to not report unexpected deaths as suicides.

Dr. Wible is great, although odd sometimes, as you said. Has plenty of good youtube videos. She's written a book about physician suicide that I plan on getting.
 
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Suicide among physicians is a problem. Physicians have higher rates of suicide and depression than the general population. They also have higher rates of suicide than other professionals. The reasons are probably several and include both the stress of the job and the personality of people drawn to medicine.

Hospitals and med schools typically have people who deal with "physician health." This is often thought of as a euphemism for substance abuse, but they provide mental health services too. If you feel you need help, go get it.

As far as do we need another thread on this, I say yes - this is a problem that physicians in general do not like to talk about which is one of the reasons people do not seek help and things escalate.

For the person who wanted a reference, here is a review article:
Levine and Bryant. "The Depressed Physician: A Different Kind of Impairment." Hospital Physician. February 2000.
 
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even if our rates of depression and suicide WEREN'T higher, I would still see that as a problem

one would hope that with our advanced knowledge of health our rates might be LOWER than the gen pop, so the fact it isn't just goes to show somehow we're not reaping the benefit of that knowledge, namely illness reduction

ALSO still a problem because depression affects productivity, and it along with suicide are ways that we see physicians leave the field of practice prematurely in a time where we are already short handed
and if that "short handedness" is to blame at all in these bad outcomes, it's making a bad problem worse

all of which are reasons to address it, all of society and the profession loses when physicians commit suicide
 
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It's been discussed ad nauseam. Statistics are in three older threads, I'm not burning an hour of the last month I have before boards looking digging through SDN for other people, I just don't have time for it.

So you responded just to tell us you won't respond?
 
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So you responded just to tell us you won't respond?
A brief response takes me ten seconds. Trolling through two dozen old threads for data could take me literally 3-4 hours. I just don't have the time. I'm tired of being SDN's archivist, I'm leaving that nonsense to other people from now on. I've wasted literally hundreds of hours settling ultimately pointless disputes about petty data on the internet and I just don't care to do it anymore, not with boards and rotations coming. Do it yourself or find someone else to. I'm mostly hanging up my account soon since phones aren't allowed on rotations and my free time otherwise is going to be too limited to participate on SDN in any meaningful capacity, aside from with those I have become close to here.

Enjoy your discussion, but leave me out of it.
 
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A brief response takes me ten seconds. Trolling through two dozen old threads for data could take me literally 3-4 hours. I just don't have the time. I'm tired of being SDN's archivist, I'm leaving that nonsense to other people from now on. I've wasted literally hundreds of hours settling ultimately pointless disputes about petty data on the internet and I just don't care to do it anymore, not with boards and rotations coming. Do it yourself or find someone else to. I'm mostly hanging up my account soon since phones aren't allowed on rotations and my free time otherwise is going to be too limited to participate on SDN in any meaningful capacity, aside from with those I have become close to here.

Enjoy your discussion, but leave me out of it.

So what was the point of responding at all? Also, I'd love to know where you are that phones aren't allowed on rotations. That's pretty ridiculous.
 
"Compared with other health professionals and the general population, doctors and medical students reported higher rates of psychological distress, burnout, diagnosed mental illness, suicidal ideation and attempted suicide."-
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26813903

Physicians don't attempt suicide at any rate higher than the general population, they've just got higher completion rates, because obviously. Physician suicide is awful, but there is nothing inherent in the profession that makes people attempt suicide more often, we've just got the physiological knowledge and planning abilities to pull it off better than the average person attempting to take their life.
 
"Compared with other health professionals and the general population, doctors and medical students reported higher rates of psychological distress, burnout, diagnosed mental illness, suicidal ideation and attempted suicide."-
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26813903
That's an article from Australia about Australian physicians. Medical systems and suicide rates vary massively between countries, so it could hardly be considered comparable to the US. Hell, just look at their general suicide statistics compared to ours and you'll see how different the country is in that regard- throw in an underfunded nationalized health system and you've got a completely different recipe for burnout and suicide than we have here.
 
Physicians don't attempt suicide at any rate higher than the general population, they've just got higher completion rates, because obviously. Physician suicide is awful, but there is nothing inherent in the profession that makes people attempt suicide more often, we've just got the physiological knowledge and planning abilities to pull it off better than the average person attempting to take their life.

That's what makes me curious though. It's well documented that a large percent of suicide attempts are a cry for help and that those attempting the act don't intend on actually dying. So do we have higher success rates because we're more medically knowledgable and a higher percentage of people that really want to die succeed, or is it because more docs actually intend to die when attempting suicide? I don't expect a researched response, but I think it's a point worth bringing up as it addresses the severity of the individual's mental state and potentially underlying issues within the system.

I have a problem.

At least you've taken the first step...
 
That's an article from Australia about Australian physicians. Medical systems and suicide rates vary massively between countries, so it could hardly be considered comparable to the US. Hell, just look at their general suicide statistics compared to ours and you'll see how different the country is in that regard- throw in an underfunded nationalized health system and you've got a completely different recipe for burnout and suicide than we have here.

This is a new argument against health care reform that I have not heard before - if we go to a single payer system, more doctors will kill themselves?

Fortunately for those of us who are physicians in support for single payer healthcare, your argument does not hold up. Physician suicide rates compared to the general population are higher, and this does not vary much from country to country.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.161.12.2295
 
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"Compared with other health professionals and the general population, doctors and medical students reported higher rates of psychological distress, burnout, diagnosed mental illness, suicidal ideation and attempted suicide."-
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26813903
Look, to offset the misinformation here, enjoy:
Suicide Attempts
In the United States, lifetime prevalence of a suicide attempt in adults is 4.6 percent, with about 0.5 percent of adults reporting attempting suicide in the past year.1,15 The 12-month prevalence for suicide attempts is higher at 1.2 percent in younger adults (ages 18 to 25 years).16 Despite the fact that men are more likely to die from suicide, women have a greater lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts than men.1 When asked to rate the seriousness of their attempt, however, men and women had similar rates of attempts during which they truly intended to die. The odds of inflicting self-harm without a true intent of dying was almost three times higher for women than men.17 Suicide attempt risk is increased in sexual minorities; most analyses report at least an 80 percent increase in risk, and several report more than double that risk.18 Interestingly, male veterans did not report higher rates of suicide attempts than civilians on the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.19

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...physicians/links/0c96051ccc800bf761000000.pdf

Results: An estimated 1.5% (N=61) of U.S. women physicians have attempted suicide, and 19.5% (N=808) have a history of depression. Those who were born in the United States, were not Asian, had histories of cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse or dependence, sexual abuse, domestic violence, poor current mental health, more severe harassment, or a family history of psychiatric disorders were significantly more likely to report suicide attempts or depression. Depression was more common among those who were not partnered, were childless, had a household gun, had more stress at home, drank alcohol, had worse health, or had a history of obesity, chronic fatigue syndrome, substance abuse, an eating disorder, or another psychiatric disorder and among those who reported working too much, career dissatisfaction, less control at work, and high job stress. Strata reporting higher rates of depression tended to show higher (although usually nonsignificant) rates of suicide attempts. Conclusions: Depression is approximately as common among U.S. women physicians as among other U.S. women, but suicide attempts may be fewer. A number of conditions may help identify women physicians at high risk for suicide attempts and depression.

Basically, women in the general population attempt suicide more than men in the general population. Male and female physicians attempt suicide at equal rates with equal completion rates (we're egalitarian like that). Female physicians attempt suicide at a far lower rate than the general population (but are better at it- the ones that attempt suicide tend to die). If the prevalence of female suicide attempts is lower in physicians than the general population, it stands to reason that the number of male physician suicide attempts are similarly low (with similarly successful results for those that do actually complete suicide).

Again, this is just an example, but the gist is that this has all been discussed before, and if you dig into any of the data, physician suicide rates look awful because we're good at ending life because we know how it works.
That's what makes me curious though. It's well documented that a large percent of suicide attempts are a cry for help and that those attempting the act don't intend on actually dying. So do we have higher success rates because we're more medically knowledgable and a higher percentage of people that really want to die succeed, or is it because more docs actually intend to die when attempting suicide? I don't expect a researched response, but I think it's a point worth bringing up as it addresses the severity of the individual's mental state and potentially underlying issues within the system.



At least you've taken the first step...
Physicians aren't into the whole "cry for help" thing. We're planners that think things through. If we attempt something, we probably put a lot of thought into it (the sort of thought that goes behind pursuing a path that takes 11+ years of education to get to). We don't swallow half a dozen Tylenols and call an ambulance. We go Hunter S. Thompson and make sure there's no way in hell we'll be alive because we have determined that life is objectively no longer worth ending and we have made a conscious decision to terminate that life. Maybe it's easier because we've seen death. Maybe it's easier because physicians, on average, tend to be less religious than the general population and thus have both seen death and believe there's nothing else on the other side, so why not if your life is awful, you know? There's a lot of other factors that go into it, but truthfully, I think that it's very much to do with the type of people that go into medicine, not medicine itself. Medicine draws in a very different crowd than most other fields, and there's no way of objectively proving that crowd wouldn't have done the same thing in investment banking or working 60+ hours as a middle manager somewhere or whatever else. There's a few studies out there based in the UK and Australia that have shown a positive correlation between intelligence and suicide- something about Anglo culture seems to make that correlation stick, where it doesn't in Nordic nations.

Whatever though, who knows. The point is it's an issue, but it's not an issue I find to be any bigger than suicide in the general population- we're not special snowflakes, we kill ourselves just like everyone else. We're just better at it, because we know what we're doing.
 
This is a new argument against health care reform that I have not heard before - if we go to a single payer system, more doctors will kill themselves?

Fortunately for those of us who are physicians in support for single payer healthcare, your argument does not hold up. Physician suicide rates compared to the general population are higher, and this does not vary much from country to country.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.161.12.2295
That doesn't have attempt rates, only completion. The disparity between attempts and completions is the confounding variable in every study anyone ever posts on this subject, and any study (such as the one I posted in regard to women) finds that physicians attempt less, but complete far, far more. Your study, for instance, found a mere 1.41 RR versus population- that's nothing when completion rates are factored in, and fails to account for many, many other variables aside. What about when compared to other high- performing professionals? What about when merely attempts are compared?

Whatever. This is what I was talking about though- you've all dragged me in to wasting an hour of my life. Please don't tag me back into this discussion, I only have a couple weeks until boards and every minute counts. I literally have a problem with SDN, and it could ruin my life if I **** up my boards because I'm too addicted to discourse to focus on my studies. So please, if you have any respect for me, do not contact me about this thread again.
 
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That doesn't have attempt rates, only completion. The disparity between attempts and completions is the confounding variable in every study anyone ever posts on this subject, and any study (such as the one I posted in regard to women) finds that physicians attempt less, but complete far, far more.

And how is this not a problem? Regardless of depression and suicidal ideation is a problem whether you are a physician or not. The fact that physicians have a higher rate of successful suicide than the general population should be of concern to any doctor and their loved ones.

Also, how is this a bigger problem in countries with single payer health care than in the US?
 
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/843252_5
http://www.physicianspractice.com/g...rican-physician-survey-results?cid=PR09042013

Both of these surveys put the number around 50% who would not go into medicine again. Granted, that's still high enough to be uncomfortable with but not quite as extreme as that 9/10 statistic.

I wonder what the percentage will be once the people who got in when things really started getting competitive make up the majority of those surveyed. I think a lot of current attendings have higher expectations in general in terms of income and autonomy than people who entered med school more recently.
 
And how is this not a problem? Regardless of depression and suicidal ideation is a problem whether you are a physician or not. The fact that physicians have a higher rate of successful suicide than the general population should be of concern to any doctor and their loved ones.

Also, how is this a bigger problem in countries with single payer health care than in the US?
Welcome to my ignore list, along with anyone else who tags me again.

Boards are more important than anything going on on SDN, so please, again, leave me alone.
 
Welcome to my ignore list, along with anyone else who tags me again.

Boards are more important than anything going on on SDN, so please, again, leave me alone.

Stop replying and people will leave you alone. As to the cell phone rule posted above, non-work communication should be banned on the wards, but cell phones are not non-work related and anyone who doesn't get that doesn't understand how medicine works.
 
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