Mental health issues not rare for doctors
WITH South Africans still reeling from the death of one of the country’s prominent scientists and cardiologists, Professor Bongani Mayosi – who took his own life following a battle with depression – a range of psychological studies have confirmed that healthcare workers are actually at high risk of committing suicide.
Internationally renowned suicide expert, Professor Lourens Schlebusch, a member of the World Health Organisation’s Multisite Intervention Study on Suicidal Behaviours, who analysed various studies found that healthcare workers such as medical doctors, dentists, psychiatrists and psychologists were more likely to commit suicide compared to the general population.
His study, which was done four years ago, found that about 1 million people committed suicide around the world each year.
“We predicted that this figure would increase dramatically to 1.5 million in the next 10 to 15 years or so. We also predicted that by 2020 depression would be one of the biggest health problems in terms of suicidal behaviour globally, including in South Africa where we had a major problem in terms of actual suicides, attempted suicides and even parasuicides which are just gestures,” said Schlebusch.
He said this was just the “background to the problem”.
“There have been many psychological studies that look specifically at healthcare professionals, and they’ve all found there’s high risk amongst them if you compare this to the general population,” said Schlebusch.
But Mayosi’s death at age 51, following a two-year battle with depression, has rattled South Africans, and the academic community, bringing the issue of mental illness into the spotlight.
According to the South African Medical Research Council’s recent Burden of Disease study, the national suicide rate is up 25 % since 2012 when 6 133 were reported.
Schlebusch said one of the findings of his analysis was that a serious suicide precipitator in healthcare professionals was the work environment.
“Now usually the work environment plays a very active role in the causation of suicidal behaviour and depression. In South Africa – from what I’ve seen and what my colleagues have observed – it is especially in academia that there is a serious problem. Because your academics in medicine and healthcare are expected to carry a very heavy clinical load, they’re expected to carry a very heavy teaching load, and on top of that, being attached to a university, they also have to do lots of research. So it becomes a very difficult, stressful environment.”