Women doctors’ suicide risk is four times more than other jobs
PATIENT complaints are pushing up suicide rates among doctors, a leading medic has said, with female doctors up to four times more likely to take their own lives than women in other professions.
The number of physicians ending their own lives is on the rise, Dr Clare Gerada has warned, saying one of the main reasons seems to be that patients are now encouraged to make complaints, which doctors find “shatter their sense of self ”, even when they are trivial or unjustified.
From 2011 to 2015, 430 doctors took their own lives in England and Dr Gerada described the issue of doctors suffering from mental health problems as “the last taboo in the NHS”.
Dr Gerada, medical director of the NHS Practitioner Health Programme, said there were a number of theories as to why female doctors had up to four times the risk of suicide compared with the general population. One was that they still had to do most of the childcare and caring for elderly parents on top of a stressful job with long hours.
Other risk factors include the stigma associated with medics receiving professional help. The former chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners council says one of the biggest risk factors is the complaints process, in which doctors can be suspended while an investigation takes place and often receives little support.
“The number of complaints has risen, and people are now encouraged to make them,” Dr Gerada said. “Complaints go to the core of what we do – we do not set out to do a bad job.”
Consultant anaesthetist Richard Harding took his life last year after a serious complaint had been made about him to the General Medical Council. He was cleared but the process took five months.
His wife, Kate Harding, a GP, tells the BBC’S Victoria Derbyshire show today that it brought back depression he had not had for years. “Those five months just felt endless,” she said.
An NHS England spokesman said doctors were offered a range of support, including a “nationally funded confidential service which specialises in supporting GPS experiencing mental ill health”.