American Healthcare Workers Are Committing Suicide In Unprecedented Numbers

1: Patients need to Be Psychiatrized to prevent them from taking their own lives.

2: This life saving system itself is rife with people who do take their own lives.

3: The system doing the 'Life Saving Psychiatrizing' should be trusted and funded by government to interfere in other people's lives when it can't forecast/diagnose, intervene in, and save the lives of people it works with day in/day out, all day?

The Hill
By Dr. Vinita Parkash, opinion contributor — 05/31/18 06:30 AM EDT

As America focuses on one epidemic — the opioid crisis — another goes entirely ignored. American health-care workers are dying by suicide in unprecedented numbers. Earlier this month, a medical student and a resident at NYU medical school completed suicide less than a week apart.

My junior colleague took her life just 11 days before her 35th birthday. I had supervised her as she transitioned into practice from fellowship. She said that the way I said her name foretold if the conversation pointed to a weakness or a strength in her patient assessment. My last sight of her was as she drove off to her new job. Less than six months later, she made a life-ending choice.
 
A scan of her suicide note, asking that I be notified, was emailed to me. I did not show it to anyone. The news of her suicide was announced by an email in the department. We all went about our business, as if suicide by a young colleague is usual. And perhaps, in a way it is.

After all, physician suicide — and more broadly health-care worker suicide — is a huge issue in the U.S. In my own experience, I have lost six colleagues to suicide — five physicians and one physician assistant. That does not include the suicides that I have heard about through the whisper network at work.

My junior colleague was among an estimated 400 physicians who took their lives in 2016. Many physicians know more doctors than patients who have taken their lives. Physicians and nurses complete suicide more often than do average Americans; rates are even higher for women in both professions. Respect, fear and love for our colleagues often leads us to list the cause of death differently on death certificates. We frequently self-medicate, so suicides may instead be listed as accidental. Phrases to describe the scope like “an entire medical school class a year” or “a doctor a day” have particularly ominous meanings for physicians.

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Thank You Dr Parkash and The Hill.


Where have we just recently seen this same Behavioral Toxicity from Government?