MNCLHD

MNCLHD

Friday, September 30, 2016

Suicide by health professionals

Suicide by health professionals: a retrospective mortality study in Australia, 2001–2012 has just been published in the Medical Journal of Australia and examines age-standardised rates and methods of suicide by health professionals, compared with suicide rates for other occupations.

The researchers looked at intentional self-harm cases recorded by the National Coronial Information System during the period 2001–2012 and found that suicide rates for female health professionals  were higher than for women in other occupations. For men, medical practitioners did not have a higher suicide rate than other professions, but male nurses and midwives did. The most frequent method of suicide used by health professionals was found to be self-poisoning. The authors concluded that that there was a need for a targeted prevention of suicide for health professionals.

Allison J Milner, Humaira Maheen, Marie M Bismark, Matthew J Spittal. Medical Journal of Australia 19 September 2016

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