Suicide by health professionals: a retrospective mortality study in Australia, 2001–2012

We commend Milner and colleagues on their most important and timely study, which investigated the age-standardised rates and methods of suicide by health professionals compared with other occupational groups.1 They established that suicide rates for female health professionals, including medical professionals, were higher than for women in other occupations. While suicide rates were higher for male nurses and midwives, those for male medical practitioners were not significantly higher compared with other occupational groups.1

Milner and colleagues considered sex-related stressors in their discussion, in an attempt to understand the gender differences in suicide rates among medical professionals. The authors considered that women working in male-dominated areas face “considerable gender role stress” and may feel pressure to undertake traditional household roles and family responsibilities.1 It is highly conceivable that the abovementioned sex-related stressors may contribute to the sex differential in suicide rates. However, sexual harassment is an important sex-related stressor2 that was not included in their discussion or in Goldney’s accompanying editorial on this topic.3 There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that sexual harassment disproportionately affects women and is an entrenched problem in the medical profession.4,5 Indeed, sexual harassment has been demonstrated to be associated with suicide attempts among female doctors.5

Goldney argues that “ensuring good workplace relationships and equal opportunity, eliminating bullying [and] reducing access to means of suicide” are important pragmatic approaches to overcoming the problem of suicide among health care professionals.3 We propose that redressing sexual inequalities in medicine and eliminating sexual harassment might represent some additional approaches.