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There's a grim, rarely talked-about twist to all that medical know-how doctors learn to save lives: It makes them especially good at ending their own.
An estimated 300 to 400 US doctors kill themselves each year - a suicide rate thought to be higher than in the general population.
Some doctors believe the stigma of mental illness is magnified in a profession that prides itself on stoicism and bravado. Many fear admitting psychiatric problems could be fatal to their careers, so they suffer in silence.
And when the pain is too much, doctors have easy access to prescription drugs and a precise knowledge of both how the body works and the amount of a drug needed for an overdose to stop breathing and halt the heart.
Clean way
"All physicians have access to neat, clean ways to commit suicide," said Dr Robert Lehmberg, a Little Rock, Arkansas, surgeon who has battled depression and long considered suicide "an exit strategy if absolutely necessary".
The American Medical Association has called physician suicide "an endemic catastrophe," and pledged to work to prevent the problem.
But the suicides have persisted. So the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has launched an educational campaign in hopes of making troubled doctors more willing to seek help. The foundation, the American College of Psychiatrists and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a maker of antidepressant pills, paid for the programme. It includes a documentary titled Struggling in Silence that begins airing on public television stations this week.
"It really has been swept under the carpet," said Dr Paula Clayton, the suicide foundation's medical director. The foundation says 300 to 400 doctors commit suicide each year, based on estimates from research.
The overall US suicide rate among men is four times higher than in women - about 23 per 100,000 versus six per 100,000 in women, according to the most recent government data. But among doctors, suicide rates are about equal for men and women, the research shows.
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