INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — America loses 300 to 400 physicians by suicide every year, according to healthcare staffing company CHG Healthcare.

“That means we lose a physician from suicide every day,” local physician Dr. Mercy Hylton said. Hylton worked as an emergency care physician for two decades and now owns a lifestyle and dietary care practice, called Mind Over Metabolism, located in Brownsburg.

Hylton shared her thoughts in a recent article titled “What Killed the Canary? Hard lessons we must learn from physician suicide.” She shared her insight with News 8, too.

Experts say the average medical student starts their journey with a similar rate of depression as their non-medical student peers. As their years of training grow, so too does their depression and overall burnout.

“And our rates of suicide are twice as high as the general population,” Hylton said. “It isn’t often talked about openly, so we don’t know. And, as far as I know, there’s not any from organization collecting that information.”

Hylton said that stigma makes it difficult to identify exactly what stressors lead a physician to suicide. There are still at least two common identifiable threads, though.

Physicians experiencing burnout is the first and more commonly reality spoken about.

“We are working in a pressure cooker environment,” Hylton said. “Very high stress, a lot of responsibility placed on us, and increasingly we have continued to have all of those responsibility. But, we are losing control of the ability to really make changes.”

That loss of control contributes to the second major stressor, moral injury, impacting physician mental health.

According to the National Institute of Health, “Moral injury describes the challenge of simultaneously knowing what care patients need but being unable to provide it due to constraints that are beyond our control.”

This is often due to constrains put in place by employers or insurance realities. It’s exacerbated when a works for a large entity, leading to a loss of autonomy.

An additional component preventing depressed doctors from getting help is centered on a fear of losing their credentials.

“We have to answer questions on our license renewals and our credentialing renewals for privileges, clinical privileges, every two to three years, and there are very intrusive questions on those forms,” Hylton said.

Many of the questions center on the physician’s mental health and any treatment they’ve received.

Hylton said that although the reality of mental health for physicians is deeply complicated, it is important for physicians to remain focused on finding togetherness.

One example of this could be joining the Indiana State Medical Association. The group allows physicians to connect individually, while also working to protect the physician-patient relationship.

Mental health resources

• Be Well Indiana
• Indiana Suicide Prevention
• Indiana Department of Child Services’ Children’s Mental Health Initiative
• National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988 or 800-273-8255
• More resources