A study of 100 physician psychiatric inpatients

Abstract

The author reviewed the case records of 100 physician inpatients in a private psychiatric hospital. He found that these physicians were more likely to have diagnoses of affective disorder and drug abuse than the general psychiatric hospital population, that their peak susceptibility occurred in their late 40s, that general practitioners and psychiatrists were overrepresented, and that female physicians were almost four times more vulnerable to suicide than male physicians. He describes some critical aspects of engaging the disabled physician in psychiatric hospitalization.