As a physician anesthesiologist, it is likely that each of us knows of a colleague who has taken their own lives. Among physicians, anesthesiologists are reported at high risk, and male anesthesiologists reign as the highest-risk population of physician suicides. To me, besides being a sad statement on the overall health of medicine, it is such a horrendous waste when a physician ends his or her own life. These individuals have given up so much of their time studying to enter medical school, to graduate with a Doctor of Medicine or Osteopathy and to complete their specialty (and maybe subspecialty) training. It is a waste when one of our colleagues becomes a substance abuser, loses their spouse, their family, their profession. It is sad that in our society, our profession, such opportunity is squandered; another life lost.
As horrible as it is, physician suicide rests on an edge of the...
