Editor's Note: The following article contains potentially sensitive content about suicide.
Death by suicide has been a widespread occurrence in antiquity across cultures. Physicians are not spared from this tragic end, with the first reported opinion in 1858 (A Manual of Psychological Medicine. 1858). This unfortunate problem has been studied for over 150 years, and these studies have at times revealed conflicting findings. While significant reductions in the incidence of death by suicide among physicians were seen in Europe through the early 21st century, the United States unfortunately continued to see high rates of death due to suicide (PLoS One 2019;14:e0226361). Whether practicing physicians have a higher rate of death by suicide than the general population remains a subject of considerable debate. A 2004 meta-analysis by Shernhammer et al. of 25 studies determined that male physicians had a rate of death by suicide 1.47-times that of...
