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For the interesting short report by Lauren Vogel on "US doctors call for tracking suicides among medical trainees" in the first issue of CMAJ 2019 I would like to make a few additions [1].
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In a recent systematic review by Coentre and Góis with 13,244 medical students from 13 different countries, the prevalence of suicidal ideation ranged from 7% to 35.6% within the past 12 months. The following major risk factors of suicidal ideation in medical students have been identified: depression or depressive symptoms, previous diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder, feeling neglected by parents, having a history of drug use, and lower socioeconomic status/financial difficulties [2].
The University of British Columbia estimated a suicide rate of 8.7/100,000 medical students/year in a recent survey of the 17 Canadian medical undergraduate programs (MDUPs). Less than half of medical schools (44%) recorded data of student deaths and only 10 MDUPs had an existing response policy or guideline in the event of a suicide. For further preventive work in this underestimated area with the exploration of risk and protective factors, Zivanovic's research group considers a national reporting strategy or a longitudinal prospective study to be necessary [3].
According to another recently published systematic review by Blacker and colleagues, comprehensive and reliable international data on medical student suicides are not available. The authors come to the clear conclu...Competing Interests: None declared.