I recommend reading this piece in Emergency Medicine News by Dr. Graham Walker. He writes about a physician colleague who recently committed suicide. The article notes that anesthesiologists and surgeons are the most likely to die by suicide, and emergency physicians come next in the specialties.
As a follow up, this NYT piece on physician suicide is also worth a read – old but still relevant. Sadly, it notes that pre-meds enter medical training with mental health profiles similar to those of their peers but end up experiencing depression at greater rates.
I’ve written about depression in doctors before and would like to reinforce the importance and urgency of seeking professional help for depressed clinicians.
