Meta-Analysis Spotlights Challenge of Physician Suicide

The risk of suicide among physicians who are women appears to be higher than women in the general population, according to ameta-analysis appearing inJAMA Psychiatry. In contrast, men who are physicians appear to have lower suicide rates than men in the general population.“Our meta-analysis showed decreasing suicide rates [since 1980], but the datasets showed paradoxical trends that may be affected by gender, race, location, and time,” Dante Duarte, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard University and colleagues wrote.Duarte and colleagues searched the medical literature for original articles from around the world that assessed male and/or female physician suicide from 1980 to the present. They used data from before 1980 to compare pre-1980 suicide rates with post-1980 rates. Of the 32 articles reviewed by the authors, nine were included in the meta-analysis.The researchers found that women physicians were 46% more likely than women in the general population to die by suicide. By comparison, men physicians were 33% less likely than men in the general population to die by suicide. The risk of death by suicide for both groups fell from 1980, according to the report.The authors noted that psychiatric illnesses, mainly depression, substance abuse, or both, were reported as risk factors in only four articles. Work or training demands were indirectly hinted at by six studies: men physicians in the United States mostly died by suicide when professionally productive, during early training, whe...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Dante Duarte ethnicity gender JAMA Psychiatry Katherine Gold meta-analysis physician physician suicide psychiatric illness race Thomas Schwenk Source Type: research