How many doctors commit suicide each year?
It is estimated that every year
400 physicians take their own life
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I was busy running around the ER on a particularly busy shift when my phone buzzed, and a text message from Jane’s ex-boyfriend David popped up on the screen. I was surprised since I had not talked to him in over three years; therefore, I ignored it until I had a moment to myself an hour later and finally opened the message.
The first line of his message got straight to the point.
“Hey, I just learned that our friend Jane tragically died a short while ago, and I thought you deserved to know.”
I read this line several times, hoping I had misread something, hoping this was a mistake. However, after a phone conversation with David a short while later, I learned that Jane had committed suicide.
I was not only devastated by this news, but I also felt trapped in a permanent state of melancholy for weeks. Jane had been not only my first close friend to commit suicide, but also my first colleague in medicine to do so.
To me, and everyone who knew her, she was extremely hardworking, compassionate, and brilliant. Since she always appeared happy and upbeat on the surface, people would never assume that she was actually struggling internally.
Jane was someone I strongly felt was bound to change the world and would be lauded on International Women’s Day, yet in a tragic irony, I found out about her death on International Women’s Day.
She worked tirelessly to overcome the grueling trenches of medical school and countless microaggressions as a woman of color in a surgical field in order to earn a spot in one of the most coveted surgical subspecialty residencies where she was a star.
Jane’s story is tragic; however, the reality is that her story is not unique in medicine, especially amongst trainees. Although Jane was my first physician colleague to commit suicide, she will certainly not be the last. A recent study estimated around 400 physicians commits suicide per year. Amongst medical trainees, suicide is more prevalent than it should be. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) reports that 23 percent of interns (first-year residents) have suicidal thoughts. Additionally, they also report that 28 percent of residents in the U.S. experience a major depressive episode during residency compared to 7 to 8 percent of those in a similar age range in the general population.
What I have learned about Physician Suicide
My first physician colleague who died by suicide:
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