(ORDO NEWS) — A US study found that pharmacists have a higher suicide rate than the general population.
Suicide is the 17th leading cause of death in the world. Approximately 700,000 people die each year as a result of suicide worldwide.
From 1999 to 2017, the suicide rate among the US population increased from 10.5 percent to 14 percent per 100,000 people.
Studies show that among medical workers – female doctors and nurses – the risk of committing suicide is higher than among other citizens. But scientists knew little about suicidal tendencies among pharmacists.
Researchers from the University of California decided to correct this shortcoming and assessed the risk of suicide among panacea ministers.
They presented their findings in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. The data was taken from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) and covered the period from 2003 to 2018.
They featured 39 states of America, and the information contained descriptions of suicides, including such characteristics as the occupation of the deceased.
It turned out that during the studied period, the NVDRS system recorded 316 suicides of pharmacists and 213,146 cases of suicidal deaths among members of other population groups.
Of the 316 pharmacists, 75 percent were male and 85 percent were white. The average age was 53.5 years (for comparison: the average age of other people who committed suicide was 49 years).
In general, the suicide rate among pharmacists was higher than among the rest of the population. According to scientists, out of 100,000 pharmacists, 20 people commit suicide, and out of 100,000 representatives of other population groups, only 12 commit suicide per 100,000 people.
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