Editorial

One can hardly pick up a medical or psychiatric publication without reading some item referring to the high suicide rate among physicians. The highest incidence occurs in the ranks of psychiatrists, followed by ophthamologists and anesthesiologists. In Australia, one out of every thirty physicians finds life not worth living. What a profound waste of care, anticipation, and training. What a waste of potential for service to our less able, needy brothers and sisters.

The shhh approach has been a major culprit in creating this problem. How can a medical practitioner, at what is considered by many the very top of the professional totem pole in personal prestige, need assistance? If he recognizes that he does, how can he seek help? In which, if any, of his colleagues will he confide? To whom can he turn? Is the old, venerable professor emeritus able to help him, or does he think Doctor Emeritus can no longer be interested in him? Who is left? One can imagine him saying, “God! Who can treat me — me, a big-shot psychiatrist who knows it all. If I can't work it out myself, there is no one, no one at all. I'll have to writhe all alone in my misery, believing I can overcome, until that long, gray, lonely hour when, bereft of all those who could help, completely spent, years-tired, certain there is no other solution, I decide to relieve the world of my existence. I will do everyone a service. Myself? - I don't really matter after all, do I? One more or less?”

Suicide may seem a reasonable solution when one is left with only such thoughts, with only such feelings. To understand the sublime hopelessness of this situation is insufficient. Much more is required of us in terms of vigorous attempts to probe and describe the etiology of suicide in the physician and to alleviate the pressures that contribute to the disease.

Prevention might be regarded as a first choice of action in dealing with the problem. Prevention, however, requires study, and who wants to become enmeshed in it? Su