The increasing number of suicides and fatal overdoses of women healthcare workers has accompanied rising sickness, disability, and women leaving the sector. The total social and economic costs of a workforce in despair are yet unknown. A shortfall of 10 million healthcare workforce (of whom 80-90% is female) is projected by the WHO for 2030 and is of critical concern.
When the health of those who look out for people’s health is at risk, the whole population and economy are at risk. This is an emergency of unprecedented scale that needs attention at the highest Public Health level. Humanity and nutrition instead of medicalization as a coping strategy urgently needs to return in the healthcare sector.
Alarming Warnings by Healthcare Workers in Despair
Recent studies noticed death by suicide and the risk for fatal drug overdose among women in healthcare is much higher as compared with the general population (1-10). It is not only female physicians, but the risk is even higher for nurses and other healthcare workers, especially for those with the lowest-paid jobs and heaviest mental and physical workload who have been most stretched to the limits (7). Worldwide over the last several years thousands of healthcare workers have died by suicide or fatal overdose leaving family, friends, and the workplace in shock and grief.
Suicide and self-harm have substantial social and economic costs (12). One death by suicide was calculated in the UK to cost the economy an average of 1.46 million pounds (13). In 2022 more than 360 nurses attempted suicide, and 72 medical professionals took their own lives in 2020 in the UK as data from the Office of National Statistics indicate. Analysis of mortality data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2007 to 2018 identified 2,374 suicides among nurses, 857 among doctors, and 156,141 in the general population. However, the number of death by suicide or fatal overdose is grossly underreported. The WHO reports that over 50% of suicides happen under the age of 50 years (14). To address this avoidable burden, a better understanding of effective and non-effective strategies is paramount.
It seems that the nursing workforce is having heavy stress on the job. They are killing themselves, either accidentally or deliberately by poison and overdosing. There is speculation that women are more sensitive than men to the drugs due to using so many of them at one time. Another factor that is not mentioned here is the mentally roiling factor of doing damage to people on the orders of the doctors and hospitals. I would not feel good about killing people with treatments known in advance to be killing large proportions of those that are having them applied to them. What do you think may be the cause to get this effect?