[Suicide among physicians--a current analysis for the City of Hamburg].

According to the literature, physicians have an increased risk of committing suicide, which can partly be explained by occupational stress. A retrospective analysis of the deaths investigated by the Hamburg office of Criminal Investigation and documents of the Hamburg Institute of Forensic Medicine for the years 2001 to 2013 showed that the average suicide rate among physicians is not significantly higher than that of the total population, it is 0.021% for physicians, 0.023% for dentists and 0.013% for the general public; thus the difference is not statistically significant (p: 0.57 for physicians and 0.74 for dentists). Drug intoxication has been found to be the most common method of suicide committed by physicians. However, these results must be interpreted with caution in view of the fact that a detailed evaluation of data was often not possible, especially because information as to the profession of the deceased and the motive for the suicide were missing or insufficiently documented.