Ending it all
Suicide.
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First​, if you are thinking about suicide this minute, please immediately call 911 or The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, by dialing 988. Check out other resources here.
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I'm not trained in managing acute suicidal ideation or behavior. But I am human, and I know how important it is to build human connection and quash shame by talking about hard stuff. Including about suicide. About physician suicide.
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We can no longer be silent.
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The American College of Emergency Physicians reports that 300-400 physicians die by suicide every year. Female physicians are up to 4x more likely to commit suicide.
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Why don't we talk about it?!?
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Maybe we're too depressed to bother. Or maybe we feel embarrassed, ashamed, and even unsafe. We are afraid we will lose our jobs or become unemployable (Ref 6, below). We tell ourselves the (imaginary!) story that it would be better to be dead than to risk losing the strong facade and dauntless identity we compulsively show the world as physicians.
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If you are despairing, I want to offer you a safe and confidential space to do the mind work of discovering new meaning and power within the despair.
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I invested in doing this work myself to rebuild my personal peace and power after confronting breast cancer and significant practice disruption during the pandemic.
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I hope no one reading this needs this messaging. But I know someone will. Statistically speaking, at least one physician per day needs this.
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Whether you are the despairing human or their supporter, please get professional medical help and reach out to me or to the nearest human who can hug you the hardest and fastest.
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Sincerely,
Jill
Women physicians are up to 130% more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
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Schernhammer, Eva. "Taking their own lives—the high rate of physician suicide." N Engl J Med 352.24 (2005): 2473-6.
Residents with depression were 6.2 times more likely to make medication errors than non-depressed residents.
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There seems to be something inherent to medical school that contributes to reduced quality of life and emergence of mental health conditions.
just a few--
References on Physician Suicide:
(there are so many. . .
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over 1,000,000 citations when searching "physician suicide" in Google Scholar
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over 9,000 in PubMed)
08.
Thus the medical profession sustains a dangerous “culture of silence.”
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EHR documentation frequently occupies more of their work hours than direct patient care.
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Death by 1,000 Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records Went Wrong
Many trainees and practicing physicians avoid [mental health] care due to fears it will impact their medical licensure, and not without reason.
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While burnout and suicide are very much organizational-level problems and not individual ones, this American Medical Association toolkit addresses both individual actions (obtaining and offering support) as well as organizational ones (promoting an environment of wellness).
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https://edhub.ama-assn.org/steps-forward/module/2702599#section-201978553
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