Suicide among physicians: Major risk for women physicians

Introduction: The risk of suicide is related to professional activity. Preliminary data suggest that being in the medical profession increases the risk of suicide in women. The objective of this nationwide study is to compare the death rate of physicians due to suicide with that of the general population and to assess the differences based on gender.

Materials and methods: All physicians and the general population who died by suicide in Spain between 2005 and 2014, both inclusive, were studied. Between these years, the Spanish population grew from 43,662,613 to 46,455,123 persons and from 199,123 to 238,240 number of doctors. The data relating to the deaths of physicians were extracted from the databases of the General Council of Official Medical Associations (CGCOM) and data related to the general population were obtained from the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The variables included in the analyses are gender, age, specialty, place of residence and death, and causes of death according to the ICD-10.

Results: The annual mean of physician deaths was 918, with an annual crude rate of 4.8 per 1,000 registered physicians. It is confirmed that physicians have a significantly higher suicide rate (average of 1.3%) than the general population (average of 0.8%) (p = 0.003). The comparison of suicide between men and women doctors is significantly higher in women (X2= 53.068, p<0.001). In addition, if we separate by gender, female physicians have a suicide rate 7.5% higher than women from the general population, although the difference is not significant (X2 = 2.614, p = 0.107).

Conclusions: . Suicide is higher among physicians than the general population and affects female physicians significantly more.