Rise in Suicide cases at Workplace

Stress at work could lead to serious consequences. Several people take the drastic step of committing suicide under immense pressure. Their professional life affects their personal life a lot, which leads to such conditions.

According to a study, 1,719 people in the US committed suicide at work between 2003 and 2010. And 207,500 people committed suicide outside their workplaces during the same period. The study has been published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

It was found that workplace suicide decreased until 2007, but it again started increasing. The statistics have showed that men are affected more than women and are more likely to commit suicide and those between the ages of 65 and 74 are more vulnerable.

According to the researchers, "One hypothesis that may explain the increased suicide rate among specific occupations is the availability and access to lethal means, such as drugs for medical doctors and firearms for law enforcement officers". They added that it has been found that workplace stressors and economic factors are associated with suicide in these professions.

Dr. Hope Tiesman, an epidemiologist with the division of safety research at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said in a statement that a person’s profession can tell about psychological risk factors for suicide, like stress and depression. Dr. Tiesman added that more analysis of public health, work life and work safety could help know more regarding suicide risk factors and also how to deal with these factors.

Tiesman added that in order to deal with increasing suicide cases in the workplace, additional research is needed to find out more about occupation-specific risk. As per the news release about the research, the military was not there in the occupations mentioned as the data sets used didn’t contain the statistics related to it.