Suicide rates in PhD's

[ajb]

I was wondering if any studies have been done on the suicide rate of people with PhD's? In particular is there any evidence that they are more likely or less likely to commit suicide (or lets say attempt) compared to the general populous? I have read that medical doctors have a relatively high suicide rate, for example, but what about physicists, chemists, biologists etc?

 

 

My initial thought, not backed up with evidence is that PhD's in science probably have a high suicide rate. These people are critical thinkers and are involved in a highly competitive career. Will the general reduction of funding for UK science add to this?

 

Sorry to sound gloomy.

[Horza2002]

I'm not sure if I've ever seen a study about PhD suicides to be honest. From my experience, undergraduates in maths and MORSE courses seem to have a few each year. I've also heard of a few deaths in chemistry resulting my accidents in the lab..but they don't really count here.

 

I wonder if this is indeed true, that maybe medical students are more likely from the fact they have a hard enough degree to do, but also if their families put additional pressure on them to do well at it. PhD/Post doc is a very competitive world already, let alone with the cuts, but didn't the Government leave the science budget alone? Ok granted its not being increased for the next few years but at least its not being decreased.

[ajb]

... but didn't the Government leave the science budget alone? Ok granted its not being increased for the next few years but at least its not being decreased.

 

Not in real terms.

[mississippichem]

It would be interesting to see a study. I don't have a pHD, but I intend to start one soon. I've noticed that the more stuff I learn the more cynical I get .

[Ringer]

Here is a study that studies links between suicide and education. It doesn't have the full text there but apparently there have been studies related to suicide and education

 

Abstract:

Suicides are associated with both high and low levels of intelligence and educational attainment in both individual-level and aggregate-level studies. A cross-national study examining the relationship between general population suicide rates ("y") and educational attainment ("x") was undertaken with the "a priori" hypothesis that the relationship would be curvilinear and follow a U-shaped curve with the quadratic equation Y = A + BX + CX[superscript 2], where A, B, and C are constants. Data on suicide rates and the Education Index (a proxy measure of educational attainment) were ascertained from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Web sites, respectively. The main finding was the predicted curvilinear relationship between general population suicide rates, in both sexes, and the Education Index fit the above quadratic equation. Given the cross-sectional study design, a causal relationship cannot be assumed. The impact of educational attainment on general population suicide rates may occur through interaction with other factors, mediation of the effects of other factors, or by its effects being mediated by other factors, and require further study.

 

 

 

[Kiki Walpanheim]

According the selfish gene theory, when the survival machine(the body) that the genes reside in figure out that the body's survivle would take up too much survival resources from its relatives or other bodies containing the same copy of genes, then it is in the genes' best interest to manipulate the body into suicide. Therefore, the genes' copies in other bodies can benefit from this body's death.

[Marat]

Most suicides don't result from career failures. In John Kenneth Galbraith's study of the Great Depression, he found that there were actually very few suicides from the sudden and massive career failures among corporate executives in the debacle, nor were many people prepared to kill themselves because of sudden bankruptcy. Suicides are usually caused by disappointed love affairs, irreparable grief, loneliness, or the horrors of chronic illness. Since in many if not most of these situations, suicide is the result of people having the courage to act rationally and choose death against the force of their dumb, animal instinct to continue living no matter how awful life is, I would suspect that more intelligent and educated people would be likely to commit this sort of suicide.

[Ringer]

According the selfish gene theory, when the survival machine(the body) that the genes reside in figure out that the body's survivle would take up too much survival resources from its relatives or other bodies containing the same copy of genes, then it is in the genes' best interest to manipulate the body into suicide. Therefore, the genes' copies in other bodies can benefit from this body's death.

 

 

Genes don't 'manipulate' actions to benefit future offspring. Even if they did how would they, being unconscious nucleic acid, know when resources are scarce and how many offspring it has had. Not to mention this would imply that women would be more likely to commit suicide than men since you can only be certain that of female progeny, which is obviously not the case.

[lemur]

I was wondering if any studies have been done on the suicide rate of people with PhD's? In particular is there any evidence that they are more likely or less likely to commit suicide (or lets say attempt) compared to the general populous? I have read that medical doctors have a relatively high suicide rate, for example, but what about physicists, chemists, biologists etc?

 

 

My initial thought, not backed up with evidence is that PhD's in science probably have a high suicide rate. These people are critical thinkers and are involved in a highly competitive career. Will the general reduction of funding for UK science add to this?

 

Sorry to sound gloomy.

I think academic compartmentalism does tend to promote hopelessness, which is especially sad because it is essentially an arbitrary belief system about how academic demand works. I.e. you do a PhD and in the course of defining your project, you create a very narrow sub-specialty with the idea of becoming a relatively high-value member of a knowledgable elite that is your particular sub-genre of your area. Then, you either get rewarded for this by getting a valued professorship or you get screwed by people deciding that your narrow specialty is not relevant enough to invest in. I think the process of specialization leads people to forget that they have general competencies and skills that make them economically valuable regardless of what funding says about their sub-specialty. However, if they get too fixated on the idea that they've been rendered permanently irrelevant, this could contribute to suicide rationalization.

 

Funding can influence this in a couple ways, though, I think. Well-funded scientists, for example, can become accustomed to a high level of status and consumption as a reward for work that is cherished by many simply because it has won them academic success. Obviously there are some people who actually appreciate science as science, but science also has many "groupies" who are mainly in it for the perks and fringe-benefits. So when you go from being a celebrated leader in your field to being confronted with funding cuts and questioning of your relevance, I think this can be more painful to people who didn't see it coming and don't have experience dealing with it. This is not to say that someone automatically opts for a suicidal exit, but that they may be more susceptible to the downturn because they had it so good before.

 

Personally, I think scientists that get permanently excluded from academic jobs have a special role to play in several ways. For one, science is supposed to be about value-neutrality and freedom from bias and, however much people want to deny it, academic funding can influence the way people regard the relative value of various lines of research, forms of publication, etc. You could be doing more scientific good by posting in public online forums than by publishing peer-reviewed articles but I can't imagine that getting recognized in academia simply because journals generate subscription money and create scarcity of credentials for competing academics. Still, science NEEDS liaisons between high academic intellectuality and "the undereducated masses." You can be cynical and view your role as a schoolteacher as just prepping people to pump money into academia and pay for research money and jobs that you're not getting, but if you continue to value the actual content of science you will want to do all you can to stimulate people to learn from it - because it has the potential to improve lives in all sorts of ways.

Edited February 5, 2011 by lemur

[Genecks]

It would be interesting to see a study. I don't have a pHD, but I intend to start one soon. I've noticed that the more stuff I learn the more cynical I get .

 

According to the study, for both sexes, higher education leads to a higher rate of suicide.

 

You may want to take a look at the methods.

suli%2E2009%2E39%2E5%2E463.pdf

Edited February 6, 2011 by Genecks

[ajb]

According to the study, for both sexes, higher education leads to a higher rate of suicide.

 

Thank you Genecks.

 

I guess this partly supports my hypothesis.

[SMF]

Lemur, as a Ph.D. scientist and teacher I can say with knowledge and conviction that much of what you have said about my profession has very little relationship to reality. SM