A systematic review on gender-specific suicide mortality in medical doctors

S Lindeman, E Laara, H Hakko and J Lonnqvist

BACKGROUND. So far no comprehensive systematic review has been published about epidemiologic studies on suicides among medical practitioners. The aim here is to describe the variation of published estimates of relative risk of doctors to die from suicide. METHOD. A systematic review of published original articles on population-based studies, registered mainly in MEDLINE and fulfilling specific methodological requirements. Incidence rates and standardised mortality ratios were calculated for male and female doctors in relation to the reference groups. RESULTS. The estimated relative risk varied from 1.1 to 3.4 in male doctors, and from 2.5 to 5.7 in female doctors, respectively, as compared with the general population, and from 1.5 to 3.8 in males and from 3.7 to 4.5 in females, respectively, as compared with other professionals. The crude suicide mortality rate was about the same in male and female doctors. CONCLUSION. In all studies the suicide rates among doctors were higher than those in the general population and among other academic occupational groups.

The prevalence of suicide among U.S. women physicians and associated factors, such as psychiatric disorders and suicidal behavior, has received little recent scientific attention. Published information on these topics has been limited, with much of the work on U.S. physicians having been done a number of years ago, primarily on white, men physicians; additional research has been conducted in other countries. Additionally, there have been no studies of U.S. physician suicide rates stratified by ethnicity, birthplace, or other strata of interest (1). Despite significant limitations in prior literature, existing work has been used to make broad statements about suicide and psychiatric illness in women physicians (1, 2).

To examine the prevalence and correlates of depression and suicide attempts in women physicians, we used the results of the Women Physicians’ Health Study, a large (N=4,501 respondents, 716 questions), nationally distributed questionnaire as our database. The Women Physicians’ Health Study contains information on multiple aspects of physicians’ self-identified histories and current practices. One component of the survey centered on psychological and social characteristics in order to examine the parameters of psychosocial functioning. Data on several factors related to suicide were collected, such as histories of suicide attempts, psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, and stress for each subject and her family members.











source:bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract