Doctor Lifeline

Rescue. Hope. Compassion.

Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at any time for free access to a trained crisis worker who will help provide support and share resources.

Doctor Lifeline has partnered with Physician Support Line, a national, free, and confidential support line service made up of 600+ volunteer psychiatrists, joined together in the determined hope to provide peer support for our physician colleagues.

No appointment necessary. Call the national support line at
1-888-409-0141.

Doctor Lifeline works to expose and correct the conditions engendering the high rate of physician and health care worker suicides.

How Bad is the problem?

Reports of 400 U.S. physician suicides per year probably underestimate the actual occurrence rate. These tragic deaths deprive about 1 million patients of their doctors each year. Physicians die from suicide at a rate twice that of the general population.

The culture of medicine discourages doctors and other health care workers from seeking help for burnout or depression. Other toxic factors include bewilderingly hostile workplace environments, loss of societal stature, excessive documentation and regulatory demands, litigation stress, inflexible poorly designed electronic health records, insurance company preemption of clinical decisions, and a prevailing perception of increasing powerlessness.

The suicide rate for male doctors is 1.4 times higher than for the general population, and for female doctors it's worse, at 2.3 times higher! This is twice the suicide rate for active duty military members, and higher even than for U.S. prisoners. We are morally bound to transform today's oppressive practice environments that compel caring and talented healers to take their own lives.

It's much worse for women doctors.

Women in the general population who aren't doctors complete suicide at a rate one fifth of that of men. However, female doctors die of suicide at a much higher rate than male doctors. When we look at the rate of female doctor suicides compared to the general population (males+females) we get a factor of 2.3 times higher. When we factor out the males in the general population, we find that women who are doctors complete suicide at a rate 11.5 times higher than women in the general population!

In this compelling video a neurosurgeon reveals the impact of public health policies on doctors and health care workers during the pandemic and beyond.

A few slides from recent presentations ---

This brief video outlines our strategic plan. We recognize that the epidemic of health care worker suicides has many causes. The problems and solutions lie at all levels of social organization -- spanning the range from the individual to the government.

Here we identify key actions we can take, broken down by organizational level.

Please help us to prevent health care worker suicides with a tax-deductable donation today.

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Copyright 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 Steven A. Reid, M.D. and Doctor Lifeline, Incorporated, Gainesville, Florida; All rights reserved.