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Abstract
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There has been a recent spurt in deaths by suicide among medical professionals in India. On 8 March 2022, two medical students died by suicide at Palanpur and Vadnagar medical colleges. A medical student, who had received admission to the MD (Medicine) course at BJ Medical College, Ahmedabad, died by suicide on 10 March, within 24 hours of admission.[1] In another incident, a 21-year-old medical student of Government Medical College, Chandigarh, was found hanging in her residence on 18 April.[2] There seems to be no end to this list of untimely deaths in a country where the medical community fought tooth and nail over the last two years to save thousands of lives from the clutches of the deadly COVID-19!
India has the highest number of medical colleges in the world and one of the highest populations of doctors worldwide. Every year 80,000 medical graduates come out from 529 medical colleges in India.[3] With the government initiative of one medical college in each district, the number of medical professionals is set to increase further. Moreover, we have doctors coming back to India after graduating in medicine from other countries. It is known that medical professionals are at a higher risk of suicide than the general population. The national figures on suicide are usually obtained from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). NCRB data provides an occupation-wise breakup, though there is no separate entry for medical professionals. Thus, our source of information remains news reports and published research papers based on these reports. Chahal et al.[4] explored suicidal deaths among medical professionals between 2010 and 2019 based on news reports and found that 358 deaths by suicide in 10 years, 70% of which occurred before the age of 30 years and 26% of which had shown warning signs prior to the act. Another Indian study reported 30 suicidal deaths between 2016 and 2019, 80% of which occurred in those younger than 40 years.[3] Anesthesiology as a specialty had the highest number of victims in both studies: 22.4% in the former study and 20% in the latter.[34] Academic stress, marital discord and mental health problems (mainly depression) were reported as the most important causes. Reports of physician suicides during and after the COVID pandemic surfaced across the world, including India, and several causes have been highlighted including work-related stress, risk of getting infected and transmitting the infection to near and dear ones, stigma, burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder...
Language: en |