From the Editor

It’s the phone call that we all dread – the call from the family or the coroner, explaining that your patient has died, likely by suicide.

At some point, we all receive that call.

Obviously, we think about the impact of suicide on families. But what impact does suicide have on us clinicians? In this week’s Reading, we consider the new BJP Bulletin paper on suicide and psychiatrists. Dr. Rachel Gibbons, an English psychiatrist, and her co-authors try to answer this question with a survey. Among their findings: a quarter of psychiatrist has considered a career change after a patient’s suicide.

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In this week’s other selection, in a Lancet Psychiatry paper, Dr. Alex Langford, also an English psychiatrist, talks about the impact that suicide has had on his life.

DG

 

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