Physician Death by Suicide: Problems Seeking Stakeholder Solutions

Each year approximately 400 physicians die by suicide in the United States, leaving an estimated one million patients without their physicians [ 1 - 5 ]. Physicians are two to three times more likely to die by suicide than members of the general population and are more likely to die by suicide than other professionals [ 6 , 7 ]. Compounding the tragedy is that for decades we have been aware that medicine is the deadliest profession [ 8 ]. The earliest articles located for this review date to 1897 and 1921 [ 9 ] and the earliest specific data supporting the statement that physicians were at greater risk than other professionals was a 1927 review of 1921 death data [ 10 ]. More physicians in the United States died by suicide than by motor vehicle accidents, plane crashes, drowning, and homicides combined in the late 1960's [ 11 ] and the statistics could go on. Suffice it to say that the trend remains at best unchanged, and at worst worsening.