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What I’ve learned from my tally of 757 doctor suicides


Shep

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What I’ve learned from my tally of 757 doctor suicides

 

From the Washington Post, January 13, 2018:

 

Assembly-line medicine kills doctors. Brilliant, compassionate people can’t care for complex patients in 15-minute slots. When punished or fired by administrators for “inefficiency” or “low productivity,” doctors may become suicidal. Pressure from insurance companies and government mandates crush these talented people who just want to help patients. Many doctors cite inhumane working conditions in their suicide notes.

 

Bullying, hazing and sleep deprivation increase suicide risk. Medical training is rampant with deplorable conditions — such as working nonstop for 24 hours or more — that are not permitted in other industries. Physicians report hallucinations, life-threatening seizures, depression and suicide due to sleep deprivation. Fatigued doctors have felt responsible for harming patients. Resident physicians are now “capped” at 28-hour shifts and 80-hour workweeks. If they “violate” work hours (by caring for patients), they can be forced to lie on their time cards or be written up as “inefficient” and sent to a psychiatrist for stimulant medications. Some doctors kill themselves for fear of harming a patient as a result of their extreme sleep deprivation.

 

After collecting so many stories over the past five years I believe that ignoring doctor suicides just leads to more doctor suicides. Suicide is preventable, but we have to stop with the secrecy and face up to what it is about being a doctor that can be so emotionally difficult. I am hopeful that the forthcoming documentary “Do No Harm"by Emmy-winning filmmaker Robyn Symon will raise awareness on both points. In the meantime, medical institutions need to openly acknowledge the problem and make changes to support the mental health of doctors and medical students.

 

Healers, after all, also need healing.

 

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If you click on the "Do No Harm" link listed above, you can view the trailer of this upcoming documentary. In the trailer, a comment is made that  it could be 1/3 of these people are suffering from "clinical depression". 

 

Questions:

 

  • Since the article mentions doctors using stimulate medications, are they also using benzos and antidepressants? Clearly they aren't aware of the additional risk of suicide, not to mention reckless behavior caused these types of drugs. And we all know this is a profession awash in pharmaceutical lies, including the belief that these drugs don't cause withdrawal and iatrogenic harm.

 

  • Severe sleep deprivation caused by work hours also makes it hard to eat properly.  Add to that the massive amounts of student debt giving medical students few resources and alternative paths. Sleep deprivation, lack of money, and poor nutrition are all tactics used by cults. Are medical students being educated or indoctrinated and brainwashed? You cannot have a conversation with a doctor because they don't like to be questioned and likely, you'll be told in a condescending tone to come back once you have your own medical degree. That's very much a cult mentality (i.e. come back when you think like I think because you've been taught what I've been taught, no critical thinking allowed here). From the Washington Post article and information on the "Do No Harm" site, these people come across as very broken down and easily manipulated into believing in their magic pills and potions - without question. 

 

  • Which brings me to my final question - should we trust our own health to people who are clearly so unstable?

 

And these are our healers . . . . 

 

It's clear your doctor isn't the problem - it's the system.  Hopefully, the tide will turn and functional, holistic medicine will take its place. As doctors look to save their own lives, perhaps they'll find a way to save their own profession - which is currently the third leading cause of death - and work to create a system that heals more than it kills. 

Edited by Shep

 

 

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Thanks for posting Shep.

 

"They jump from hospital windows or rooftops. They shoot or stab themselves in hospital parking lots. They’re found hanging in hospital chapels. "

 

These words suggest to me one thing psychoactive drugs use and wdl. These outcomes should be no surprise if they apply the tapering methods they give to patients to themselves. No surprise!

Yet just reading the article very quickly for gist I don't actually think the finger is being pointed at drug use or possible wdl effects ....its blamed on other things like to long hours work stress etc. Even when they lose their own kind and take some of their own medicine they still don't get it! 

 

In wdl I had to fight daily these dreadful self destructive thoughts my brain seemed to overwhelm me with a desire to hang myself I couldn't look at trees or rafters in the garage in innocent ways. I was consumed by it. I actually removed a big oak tree with large horizontal branches from my front lawn so I didn't have to see it every day!! lol

It really was a war. And when I had finally silenced my brain that I would not be hanging myself under any circumstances it shut up about hanging myself and then began again except this time it was trying to get me to shoot myself and so it went on when I won that argument it introduced a new idea ...stab myself couldn't see kitchen utensils in normal ways...it was scary...then jump in front of a bus....jump off a bridge. When I had finally got my brain to shut up its voice slowly receded away. It was just relentless. 

It was all drug withdrawal. Pity doctors cant see this.

Thought for the day: Lets stand up, and let’s speak out , together. G Olsen

We have until the 14th. Feb 2018. 

URGENT REQUEST Please consider submitting  for the petition on Prescribed Drug Dependence and Withdrawal currently awaiting its third consideration at the Scottish Parliament. You don't even have to be from Scotland. By clicking on the link below you can read some of the previous submissions but be warned many of them are quite harrowing.

http://www.parliament.scot/GettingInvolved/Petitions/PE01651   

Please tell them about your problems taking and withdrawing from antidepressants and/or benzos.

Send by email to petitions@parliament.scot and quote PE01651 in the subject heading. Keep to a maximum of 3 sides of A4 and you can't name for legal reasons any doctor you have consulted. Tell them if you wish to remain anonymous. We need the numbers to help convince the committee members we are not isolated cases. You have until mid February. Thank you

Recovering paxil addict

None of the published articles shed light on what ssri's ... actually do or what their hazards might be. Healy 2013. 

This is so true, with anything you get on these drugs, dependance, tapering, withdrawal symptoms, side effects, just silent. And if there is something mentioned then their is a serious disconnect between what is said and reality! 

  "Every time I read of a multi-person shooting, I always presume that person had just started a SSRI or had just stopped."  Dr Mosher. Me too! 

Over two decades later, the number of antidepressant prescriptions a year is slightly more than the number of people in the Western world. Most (nine out of 10) prescriptions are for patients who faced difficulties on stopping, equating to about a tenth of the population. These patients are often advised to continue treatment because their difficulties indicate they need ongoing treatment, just as a person with diabetes needs insulin. Healy 2015

I believe the ssri era will soon stand as one of the most shameful in the history of medicine. Healy 2015

Let people help people ... in a natural, kind, non-addictive (and non-big pharma) way. J Broadley 2017

 

 

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5 hours ago, nz11 said:

It was all drug withdrawal. Pity doctors cant see this.

 

So true, NZ. It is a pity. 

 

One day, hopefully they will see the light and change the system. It really is a systemic problem.

 

 

 

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Hmm, with the craziness that exists in conventional medicine with insane hours that result in sleep deprivation and under a lot of bullying supervisors, I can see doctors committing suicide without even being on meds.    It would be interesting to know the percentage of folks who tragically committed suicide who were on meds vs. not being on them.   Then again, maybe we don't want to know this because then there would be the claim that if these docs not on drugs had been medicated, they would have been saved.   

Drug cocktail 1995 - 2010
Started taper of Adderall, Wellbutrin XL, Remeron, and Doxepin in 2006
Finished taper on June 10, 2010

Temazepam on a PRN basis approximately twice a month - 2014 to 2016

Beginning in 2017 - Consumption increased to about two times per week

April 2017 - Increased to taking it full time for insomnia

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It would be interesting to know the statistics, CS. You're right about how it will play out in any form of analysis, though. Lots of propaganda and confusion, I assume. 

 

It's clear the system needs to be changed. We ALL are getting harmed, doctors and patients. 

 

 

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I must admit I can not pity doctors. Sure, they may have their own problems, but I think if they started to threat patients properly, there would be not so much people always coming back and they would have less work. The problem of health system in my opinion is not too less money but big ineffectivity  (every doctor takes you only blood and then doesnt bother anymore to find the cause of your pain, and if already fifth makes it, there is no money anymore and you have again to come back as your problem stayed and noone found the cause).

 

And that the doctors take antidepressants I dont pity them. We have one proverb: "Karma is without costs". They are reaping only what the sew. Thanks God, the failing medical system starts to destroy itself. The people who killed before other people with their poisons  start to kill themselves too.

05/2013 Lyrica 100 mg / per day for pain + PGAD resulting from caesarian delivery11/2014 started to taper: 50 mg per day/ for one week then c/tafter one month reinstated at 50 mg /per days of 10 July 2015 drug free-

symptoms OCD

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  • 6 months later...

Related article does mention difficulty weaning off. 

 

http://www.idealmedicalcare.org/75-med-students-antidepressants-stimulants/

 

"I’ve been on an antidepressant since being premed—18 years now. Little did I know it would be impossible to wean myself off and that my entire class was using Adderall.”

 

75% are on antidepressants and/or stimulants.  I've contacted the author to discuss withdrawal, especially if they are self-medicating and starting and stopping drugs.  

 

I agree that it is a systemic problem.  Not unlike a circle of abuse, if that makes sense.  

 

Tragic.  

Pristiq tapered over 8 months ending Spring 2011 after 18 years of polydrugging that began w/Zoloft for fatigue/general malaise (not mood). CURRENT: 1mg Klonopin qhs (SSRI bruxism), 75mg trazodone qhs, various hormonesLitigation for 11 years for Work-related injury, settled 2004. Involuntary medical retirement in 2001 (age 39). 2012 - brain MRI showing diffuse, chronic cerebrovascular damage/demyelination possibly vasculitis/cerebritis. Dx w/autoimmune polyendocrine failure.<p>2013 - Dx w/CNS Sjogren's Lupus (FANA antibodies first appeared in 1997 but missed by doc).

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On 1/14/2018 at 8:01 PM, Shep said:

 

So true, NZ. It is a pity. 

 

One day, hopefully they will see the light and change the system. It really is a systemic problem.

 

 

Related article posted separately.  Please edit as needed. I haven't posted an article in ages!  

 

Pristiq tapered over 8 months ending Spring 2011 after 18 years of polydrugging that began w/Zoloft for fatigue/general malaise (not mood). CURRENT: 1mg Klonopin qhs (SSRI bruxism), 75mg trazodone qhs, various hormonesLitigation for 11 years for Work-related injury, settled 2004. Involuntary medical retirement in 2001 (age 39). 2012 - brain MRI showing diffuse, chronic cerebrovascular damage/demyelination possibly vasculitis/cerebritis. Dx w/autoimmune polyendocrine failure.<p>2013 - Dx w/CNS Sjogren's Lupus (FANA antibodies first appeared in 1997 but missed by doc).

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