Physician suicide: Searching for answers

In a profession dedicated to saving lives, doctors all too often are taking theirs. Physicians look for ways to help troubled colleagues.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. April 25, 2005.

Every day for weeks, Michael L. Schmitz, MD, replayed in his mind the final encounters with his friend, searching for clues and asking why.

Was there anything he could have done to prevent pediatric heart surgeon Jonathan Drummond-Webb, MD, from committing suicide the day after Christmas 2004? Why didn't his friend come to him and talk before taking an overdose of painkillers and alcohol? When Dr. Schmitz accidentally broke the hood ornament off the surgeon's Mercedes-Benz while clearing ice from the car, did that trivial incident help nudge Dr. Drummond-Webb over the edge?

Dr. Schmitz asked those questions but doubts he will ever know the answers.

"I couldn't tell that he behaved any differently the week before he killed himself than anytime before. He went into this dark, deep place and I didn't see him go there. It's like somebody's on your team and they take off without telling you anything," said Dr. Schmitz, director of pediatric cardiovascular anesthesiology at Arkansas Children's Hospital, in Little Rock. Dr. Drummond-Webb was chief of pediatric and congenital cardiac surgery at the hospital.

Physician health experts say about 250 U.S. physicians take their lives each year, leaving behind friends, co-workers, patients and families to ponder what led them to such a tragic act. Fellow physicians, nurses and other staff members struggle to cope with the death emotionally, often blaming themselves for not seeing it coming. At the same time, they are juggling the doctor's patient load and trying to come to grips with what happened.