An abundance of stress in any career can lead to an underperformance of workers. But with the lives of patients in their hands, the underperformance of medical doctors can reap much more severe consequences than that …show more content…
The suicide rate of physicians has shown significant growth in recent years to the extent that individuals in this occupation are now statistically more likely to commit suicide than the majority of the public. In the article “Suicide Compared to Other Causes of Mortality in Physicians”, Dr. Dario M. Torre, et al, an internal medicine specialist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine states, “Suicide was the only cause of death where risk was greater than that in the general population with [a standardized mortality rate] of 1.82” (148). This means that in the cohort of medical doctors involved in Dr. Torre’s study, there were 82% more deaths as a result of suicide than in the average populace. Such a number makes it immensely clear that chronic stress and the resulting mental illnesses among physicians are not merely isolated contingencies; they are an