Sunday, October 10, 2010

Not healing themselves

I mentioned recently some Australian research on doctors and their higher rate of suicide.

Now there’s a article in the New York Times on the same topic in the American medical system.  It contains some pretty surprising information, such as this:

For several decades now, studies have consistently shown that physicians have higher rates of suicide than the general population — 40 percent higher for male doctors and a staggering 130 percent higher for female doctors. While research has traced the beginning of this tragic difference to the years spent in medical school, the contributing factors remain murky. Students enter medical school with mental health profiles similar to those of their peers but end up experiencing depression, burnout and other mental illnesses at higher rates. Despite better access to health care, they are more likely to cope by resorting to dysfunctional behaviors like excessive drinking and are less likely to receive the right care or even recognize that they need some kind of intervention.

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