It would be wise for physicians and surgeons to organize a country-wide formal mandatory for all physicians 6 month mental health and lifestyle review internal congress. The mandatory reviews should begin in med school at year 1 and continue throughout the career. Any and all findings and remedies must be immune from penalties and professional repercussions as long as treatment for identified problems is accepted and voluntarily embraced. Practise of medicine is a high-risk profession full of pitfalls and dangers and the physician is not able to heal himself alone and in isolation.

Our family doctor committed suicide a few years ago by shooting himself and our eye doctor jumped off an overpass onto the interstate. What is going on? Both were kindly , caring compassionate people.

I am always shocked to read statistics about such high suicide rates among doctors, specifically surgeons, as noted in this article. The reason why it is shocking to me is because throughout my 60 years I have seen PLENTY of doctors, including a few surgeons, and NOT ONE of them has EVER left me with any indication whatsoever from their demeanor that they give a rats -SS about the feelings of their patients, to say nothing of any "guilt" that they might feel if they make an error in judgement. I have had doctors make errors in diagnosing things with me (nothing serious, thankfully) and all I've ever gotten in response is arrogance and aloofness. Any doctor/surgeon I have ever met with are rude, in a hurry like they are running late for a date, or just arrogant and ill-at-ease about even looking you in the eye and talking to you like a FRICKIN human being! Everyone always esteems doctors with brilliance. BULLSH--. Most I've ever met are incompetent morons and it is amazing to me how most get through medical school. Very scary thought how they do so. Think about it! So, I'll say it again, I am shocked that so many people in this profession since most, if not all, act as how I describe above, commit suicide due to depression or guilt about a botched job, or whatever. I still think none of them give a RATS a--. There has to be other reasons why they do themselves in since they don't care one iota for their patients.

I would support this

They forgot long hours, high stress, unrealistic expectations from the public, and having our salaries slashed by the government.

Most doctors are caring people, that's why we enter the profession

Why do you think they call shows like Greys Anatomy, and ER a TV drama? When my mom had lung cancer the surgeon was saying she had some grey hairs after her operation. The surgeon had to operate her in such a way with out cracking her rib cage. I thank the surgeon forever to this day for doing all she did to save my mom's life.

I cannot say that I blame them. I am in the military and I am currently under a great deal of stress due to personal problems. I don't matter in how much pain I am I will not go to mental health. I was told that my commander could potentially access info about mi visits and of course I didn't go. Besides you never know what somebody is going to say about you, in their eyes there could be all sorts of stuff wrong with you. Psychologists and counselors have a lot of liability too! they could be under pressure of reporting any kind of abnormal behavior in case you go out and do something, even if it is uncalled for just to be safe. You never know what their supervisor is telling them to do or what their standards are.

I can totally relate to not seeking help. Your career is at risk and if you get flagged for some reason then your life is over. You would be surprised how many people feel like crap but decide to continue without seeking help for fear of losing it all, and their fears are well founded.

Of course there is going to be people here that will say "that is not how it works and everything". Well I tell this people stop believing everything you see in TV and until you are not in that situation then STHP. 

I give you one example: I like drinking beer right? I drink beer like any other 26 year old would and I never had a problem with it. I am very responsible and I always know when to stop. I don't need alcohol to function and it is just fun. Well, according to USAF surveys if you drink more than 4 beers (or any type of drink) in one night then you are at very high risk of becoming an alcoholic.

Also, I always enjoyed drinking at home every now and then since I hate the way people behave like idiots once they get wasted. Well, in those surveys I am talking about having a beer at home by yourself is a red flag.

If you seek counseling then you are asked this questions, and if you answer with the truth even if it is not an issue, they have no more option but yo report you and put you under further counseling. It is a load of crap!

Before any counselor wanna be wants to tell me I'm wrong. you first need to know that certain professions do not allow for any doubt. Being a doctor is one of them. If you work at the office or construction for example I am sure that counseling will not be an issue, but surgeons and soldiers have to be more reliable. apparently you have to be some sort of super human once you carry that title. 

There is also the issue of medication; now days they give you antidepressants for everything instead of really counsel you. The whole system will never be perfect but that's just the way it is.

 I am an Engineer on a high pressure job.  After the 911 attacks, I worked everyday for four months, trying to salvage our big tivket projects, power plants and transmission lines.  Hndreds of jobs were on the line.  I seriously thought of suicide in my Sears Tower office.  Suicide , I believe, is the result of chronic stress, both high and low levels.  Sometimes you just snap!

The same can be said about Anesthesiologists. Perhaps being employed by the government - working 40 hours a week with benefits would reduce the suicide rate and depression of many doctors. Of course, you would need a lot more government physicians for the same amount of work.

Plenty of doctors are nut jobs out for the almighty dollar and that's it.

In our society, any result less than perfect is deemed unacceptable by many and lawyers make their living off that. Surgery (and medicine) is part art and part science, and the art part of that by definition makes it not always reproducible. But patients are bombarded with ads telling them they have rights to sue for outcomes that were less than perfect. Add the stress of dealing with insurance that doesn't want to pay and the stress of running a small business and the ever increasing government that demands more and more every year, and you get to a point where you just want out. If too many depend on you financially and retirement is too many years away, that out can sometimes be thoughts of suicide.

I am a lawyer and my profession is also hounded by suicide. I believe lawyers and doctors commit suicide because they affect lives (most of the time positively, on occasion, negatively) and feel responsible when their efforts result in pain. No one is without fault; we all make mistakes and sometimes exercise discretion in a less than perfect way. We try hard, expect the best and are hurt when the results are less than expected. Because our failures are significant (have a great deal of impact on our patients and clients), when we add failure to the feeling of invincibility that we learn from academic success and the anxiety integral to our work, we have a hard time coping with jail or death and lose ourselves in a bottle or suicide.

us taxpayer, you are right about anesthesiologists. i worked for one he was nice and very caring to his employees and patients but suffered from drug abuse and it was attributed by depression/stress. He recently passed away from overdose.

If you have a problem with American Doctors, please go to another country and seek help! Go for a doctor who gets paid the least, has no skill or ability. Let that doctor perform heart surgery on you. You hate doctors because you live in a dump and your a class A LOSER! Capitalism has given the world the best technology in Health care!!!!

I believe that the essence of providing medical care is to bring about healing and well-being to the patient. Such wonderful initiative must not leave the life of the provider in ruin as this study seems to suggest. In my opinion, the profession's decision makers must ensure that they bring into the surgery profession things that will enhance the life of the surgeon. For instance, they must make sure that the surgeon is able to balance their social life with their work.

What is amazing to me is that it took 11 posts to point out the fear of litigation and its result on physicians. When 90 percent of the worlds lawyers live in the United States that makes for a lot of law suits. While I applaud some in the legal industry for engineering certain changes in health care that have reduced the overall number of medical errors, I find the total number of lawsuits deplorable. Doctors in turn order unnecessary tests not for diagnoses, but to cover themselves in the event that someone decides to sue. The cost of each visit then goes up accordingly. New doctors graduate medical school with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt only to find that as much as 1/3rd of their salary may have to fund malpractice insurance. What happens as a result? You guessed it-health care costs go up again.

Today's physicians practice in an environment where HMO's dictate the number of patients they need to see. So as a post read earlier that doctors are in a hurry and always act late, just look to the fact that their job demands they see 50 patients in a day. If they don't, then the office staff can't get paid, malpractice insurance can't get paid, and in the end people lose their jobs.

Most doctors I know started out wanting to help people and had grand visions of doing so their entire career. Then they get into practice and somebody has a bad outcome. They take it personally, they feel for the patients and their families, they wish they could change the outcome. They spend countless hours reviewing what went wrong trying to think of a way they could have prevented the incident from happening. They discuss the event with their peers in conferences to educate one another. Then they are named in a lawsuit, and not necessarily because they did something wrong, but because something didn't turn out like a patient would have wanted.

Doctor's today make on average one half to one fourth what doctors made 15 years ago. While it is still enough to make a comfortable living, it is hard to justify the risk for the reward. The number of doctors who will retire over the next 10 years is astounding. Access to health care will become increasingly scarce and fewer U.S. students will go into medicine. You think doctor's seem busy now, just wait a few years.

Depressed Doctors? You bet! I'd be depressed too if I worked 80 hours a week, never saw my wife and children, did my best to help people- only to have it thrown back in my face. Unfortunately in today's litigious environment it is only going to get worse. It reminds me of the old saying "don't bite the hand that feeds you". When none of us can find health care we will have only ourselves to blame.

Suicide is a thought that many of us have contemplated whether we are surgeons or not. It comes with disillusionment with our current point in life. As surgeons we are taught from early in our training that showing signs of weakness is unacceptable. The weak are weeded out, there is only room for the strong at the top. But once training is over, life begins. And so does the disillusionment. We end up working for business people who run the hospitals, clinics, and surgery centers and treat you like a commodity. You end up treating people who have unrealistic expectations of what modern medicine can achieve, and you live with spouses and significant others who have deferred a normal existence for far too long. This happens to the best of us and there are few outlets. Let me be the first to say, mandatory counseling is not the answer, neither are more regulations or government oversight. There needs to be a fundamental, cultural change.

Shorter hours, more job security, less paperwork, elimination of the constant fear of being sued, educational loan repayment/forgiveness for treating the uninsured, fewer patients, more family time...those are concrete changes. Eventually, the market will adjust, less and less qualified people will enter the surgical disciplines, the quality of care will go down, more mistakes will be made before the necessary changes are made to attract the best and brightest once again. Till then, the lucky among us will continue to do what we do best...endure.

"job burnout and depression lead surgeons to contemplate suicide at higher rates than the general public"

There you have it folks. Make sure you put these folks on the Federal watch list. Don't sell them any guns. Oh ya! make sure you stop by their houses and collect any they might already have too.

 My Mom died after a 10 hour surgery in which some major things went wrong. It was not the surgeon's fault; Mom was a pack or more a day smoker. That contributed to all of her heart problems, lung problems, etc. She more than ignored previous surgeons' warnings about quitting smoking. She would not listen. So, who is to blame? The man that tried to save her life or the woman who ignored sound advice? Figure it out. Also, my dear husband had inoperable cancer, and I was there when the oncologist was with him, crying when he told my husband and me that there was nothing else to do for him. This doctor was not after the almighty dollar, rather he wanted to help his patients. For all the negative people, you get what you give. If you look only for the bad, that is what you will find in anyone, anywhere.

My personal opinion: Surgeons have some of the of longer residencies. Plus, the once I have know have the biggest "God" complexes. They also seem to be the ones who are least personable and many of them have no personality or ability to connect with other people (I think it is due to the fact that they are so smart.) When something goes wrong they have the least ability to deal with the disappointment or consequences of situation(s). They are people too, and when their feeling a being not infallible arises, they have no skills to deal with those feelings.

God bless all the Physicians. Society should demand fair work practices, not only in the medical profession but others as well. This cultural shift must also take place in the American mindset (first), as so many make work their #1 priority. This is a recipe for disaster, and you'd have to be blind not to see the effects that have taken place over the last several decades. Divorce, children with issued too many to list, mental health problems, etc... This is just the beginning unless we redefine the meaning of American success.

Thank You for understanding and illustrating an accurate view of a doctor's situation today. The picture you stated above is exactly true for myself, and I have never been more depressed in my life. After 9 years of school and a 6 digit debt, working 70 stressful hours a week, barely making my minimum student loan payments, no wife, home, or kids, and no sight of retirement in sight, I had a heart attack this year before I'm even 40. The current administration's destruction of healthcare has made my future career even more bleak, and I am happy to have a job I love, but pray that I don't ever become one of these statistics.

Eric-2940144, please take care of yourself and do whatever you can to work less. Life is too short to be having heart attacks before you are forty! Fall in love. How about going to work for a non-profit if they'll assume your loan payments. Hey, you'll live longer and you'll fall in love again with your profession because you'll be helping others and working for a human agency.

Wow, I am pleasantly surprised to see the vast majority of these comments are supportive of physicians. Thank you all very much and please keep up the support. One poster was right, the change must come from the American Public first.

I believe the specter of litigation is far more damaging to us than the work load or debt. I believe it is the primary problem in healthcare today. Do not let a politician fool you. Especially a democrat.

Just as the republicans should hang their head in shame for being in the pockets of the banks that ruined the economy, the democrats should be ashamed they are in the pockets of the the American Association for Justice, also known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA®), the lobby that killed tort reform in the current nightmare health care reform. Tort reform might have been the only glimmer of light in that pile of rubbish.

As long as the medical legal status quo stands, health care will cost everyone more than it should.

Getting back to the topic at hand (sorry about that!), I'm not sure why surgeons and probably physicians in general have this suicide rate. I would wager one would find the same tendency in any exclusive professional field where there is a perfect storm of long hours, threat of lawsuit, government intrusion, threat of being replaced by the undertrained (see physicians assistants in ERs), high debt, unjustified pay cuts, stigma for anything less than perfection, and most importantly, the gravest of consequences for mistakes: patients' morbidity and mortality. I bet air traffic controllers empathize. Nurses must feel this too.

We physicians are trying our best.

We haven't quit because we love this and we love to help you. The sad fact is we would probably continue well beyond the current insults we have sustained, financially and otherwise. In fact it is seldom the money I think. It's the lack of appreciation, the lawsuits, the control being wrestled from us, the ones who should be making the decisions, from the likes of HMO, Medicare/Medicaid, etc.

Medicine should be between the physician and the patient. Please fight to keep it that way.

Let us think about this. A dr. tells a patient who's 100 lbs. overweight to go on a diet . The patient won't do that. Tells a patient who has emphysema to quitsmoking and they won'tdo itt. The diagnosis goes on and on. But the patients keep coming back to the Dr. and complaining. I am not in the medeical field. I'm a patient , like about most of America. I can understand how the positi
on of trying to help some people who won't help themselves could cause some great anxiety.