Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data have revealed an alarming trend: female physicians were 53% more likely to commit suicide than females in the general population. Women are still only 25% of physician suicides, men are 80% of doctors who kill themselves, and the obvious risk factor is mental health issues and a key cause for that is legal issues. The American legal system allows unlimited liability and lawyers have successfully blocked all efforts at tort reform. Analyses have shown even 74% of OB/GYNs are hit with malpractice claims within 15 years of starting practice.(1) With a vaccine denier running the US Department of Health and Human Services that liability is going to go even higher.(2) 

Medicine can be stressful because of chronic worry about patients but also due to the regulatory and legal issues that government has created or enabled. The five-year period analyzed included 137,000 suicides.  Compared to the general public, 66% more doctors who committed suicide reported mental health issues and were 40% more likely to have legal problems. They were 300% more likely to have tested positive for drugs. They most often died from poisoning.



The sex difference in physician risk remains poorly understood. While cultural activists claim there are fewer females in math and that is due to gender bias, women instead report being more likely to want to help people. Academic math doesn't directly do that but medicine does, and it also explains why education has twice as many woman as men far better than bias against men does.

If more women go into medicine because they want to help, and feel they are not really doing that as much as nurse practitioners, that will lead to disappointment and stress. 

It is something that needs to be fixed and could benefit all Americans. Get rid of the Internal Revenue Service, sure, the US tax code is ridiculous, but tort reform and fewer regulations that allowed doctors to get back to medicine would be the best thing a new administration can do.

Unfortunately, with an HHS Secretary who was a Natural Resources Defense Council lawyer campaigning against medicine, it may be a while before doctors get any relief.

NOTES:

(1) This increases the cost of health care nearly as much as Obamacare did. Not because of malpractice insurance, but because of "defensive medicine" - ordering a lot of tests to check off the boxes that lawyers might otherwise use to sue. It increases costs substantially and helps no patients.

(2) Right now, a vaccine has to actually show harm before anyone can sue and trial lawyers are hoping it will become more like the American Disabilities Act in California - if anything could potentially ever cause harm the lawsuit can commence.