What is considered the reason that dentists have such a high suicide rate?

zbeckabee

Dentists, veterinarians and doctors are particularly at risk for suicide – not because of their high-stress professions but because they have access to lethal chemicals and know how to handle them, Bertolote said. http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/front/detail/More_die_from_suicide_than_wars_and_murders.html?siteSect=105&sid=7051323&cKey=1157904394000 Dr Keith Ashcroft, a forensic psychologist based in Manchester, notes that “suicide is indeed more common among the professional classes: scientists like vets and dentists have notoriously high suicide rates”. In fact, Ashcroft has a telling theory of his own. He thinks that “emotional intelligence” is relevant tothe IQ/suicide question. Ashcroft wonders whether people with very high IQs might tend to have lower emotional intelligence — ie, inferior “people skills”. After all, everyone is aware of the cliché of the lonely genius, unable to fit in with society, who is eventually driven to suicide by his isolation. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article996719.ece Sep 10 08, 9:21 PM

edmund80

According to the source below, it seems to be more a statistical phenomenon than anything else. Basically, most dentists are white males and dentists tend to work beyond age 65. Coincidentally, old white males have a high incidence of suicide. Therefore, dentists have a high suicide rate. However, it also proposes four other reasons why suicide might truly be higher among dentists, and not just a function of statistics. I tend not to agree with those reasons as the dentists I know are just too happy with their lives. http://books.google.com/books?id=Zi-xoFAPnPMC&pg=PA216&lpg=PA216&dq=high+suicide+rate+dentists&source=web&ots=DBB1W0i3gv&sig=KeOreAFqTjzxAm3KVYzKZQIto1U&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result Sep 10 08, 9:32 PM