“Society’s silence about mental illness is deafening. When you are diagnosed you disappear. …’There’s this attitude out there that if you come back from cancer, you’re a hero, but if you come back from depression, you’re damaged goods.’” from Andre’s Picard’s article about mental illness in Canada Toronto’s Globe and Mail
Depression seems to extract an even greater toll from the community of physicians. “[T]here are still pockets of stigma in a society like medicine. It’s a paradox: The healer can’t be sick.” The suicide rate for male doctors is twice the average for the general population; the rate for female physicians double the rate of male physicians. Read more.
But there is a price. The late treatment, severity of symptoms and easy access to potentially lethal drugs – along with the pervasive stigma in society – means the rate of suicide among male physicians is about twice that of the general population. Among female physicians, it is about four times higher.
