A study shows that the suicide rate in Iran’s medical community has increased fivefold, with “three suicides resulting in death” among healthcare staff reported this year alone.
Khabar Online website reports that the “chain of suicides” among healthcare staff in the new Iranian year (starting March 21) with the death of a young doctor named Parastoo Bakhshi, a cardiologist at Delfan Hospital.
A month later, in May, two more suicides were reported. The death of Dr. Samira Al-e-Saeedi, Associate Professor of Rheumatology and a member of the Rheumatology Research Center at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, occurred in early May, and the second incident, a week later, was the suicide of Dr. Zahra Maleki, a project doctor in Jask.
According to this study, the phenomenon of “doctor suicides” has been reported under various titles such as “sudden death” of a certain doctor since 2018, and since 2019, the medical community has experienced two different waves of suicides.
The second wave of doctor suicides occurred in the past three years, during which 13 interns committed suicide, and in January 2024, the wave was repeated with the suicides of three more residents within a week.
Hadi Yazdani, a physician with a professional doctorate in medicine, likened suicide in the medical community to a “domino” and, referring to the feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and utter despair in these cases, said: “The death of Dr. Parastoo Bakhshi is the start of a chain and could be the source of other suicides.”
He emphasized that “the issue of systematic deficiencies in the Ministry of Health and its existing regulations, such as the project law, the distribution of personnel, the special cases commission, and the interference of local forces in the work of project doctors” are the most common motivations for suicide among healthcare staff.
According to this study, high workloads, numerous responsibilities, inadequate salaries, and lack of job security are fundamental problems for healthcare staff.
According to the Khabar Online website, based on statistics approved by the Migration Observatory, “74 percent of doctors and nurses expressed a desire to emigrate by the summer of 2022,” and the number of doctors emigrating last year exceeded 4,000.
Previously, the spokesperson for the Iranian Medical Council acknowledged the increase in suicides in the medical community, stating that “the very high workload and the mismatch between the salaries received and the activities performed are one of the reasons for the suicides of residents,” and said that these suicides are “multifaceted and complex.”
In an interview with the state-run ILNA news agency, Reza Laripour had said: “A resident these days cannot rent a house and cover daily living expenses in Tehran on their own, so with a sense of hopelessness about their career future and the destruction of their previous perceptions of entering the medical field, they first enter a period of stress and anxiety and after developing depression, turn to suicide.”
In January, the Iranian Psychiatric Association wrote a letter to Ebrahim Raisi, the then-president of the Iranian regime, reporting the high suicide rate among residents and warning that the continuation of this trend could lead to the “collapse of the country’s healthcare system.”
