I’ve always heard that dentists have the highest suicide level of any of the medical professions, but I’ve never believed it. Is there any truth to it?
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Dentists’ odds of suicide “are 6.64 times greater than the rest of the working age population,” writes researcher Steven Stack. “Dentists suffer from relatively low status within the medical profession and have strained relationships with their clients–few people enjoy going to the dentist.” One study of Oregon dentists found that they had the highest suicide rate of any group investigated. A California study found that dentists were surpassed only by chemists and pharmacists. Of 22 occupations examined in Washington State, dentists had a suicide rate second only to that of sheepherders and wool workers.
But the sheer diversity of results has to make you suspicious. I mean, which is it–dentists, chemists and pharmacists, or sheepherders and wool workers? (What, the bleating gets to them?) And what about psychiatrists? One school of popular belief holds that they have the highest suicide rate.
U.S. white male dentists (1968-72): 2.0 (85 of 4,190)
I know what you’re thinking. Percentages! They’re so primitive! What about the Poisson distribution, the chi-square test, the multivariate regression analysis? Not to mention the fact that I don’t express suicides relative to 100,000 living population; that I haven’t corrected for age distribution, socioeconomic status, etc; and that I couldn’t find any current data for dentist mortality in the readily available literature. Sue me. We’ve got enough here to draw some basic conclusions.
