Doctors and suicide

On Monday 28 April 1902, Dr Jeannie Charlotte MacLeod (Jeannie) buttoned her starched white coat, checked her pockets for her stethoscope and notebook, took one last look at herself in the mirror, and walked onto the paediatric ward as the new House Officer at Aberdeen Children’s Hospital. She glowed with pride as she introduced herself to the Senior Ward Matron, able to use the title of Doctor for the first time. By the end of that week, Jeannie was dead. At the age of 28 and alone in her on-call room, she had cut her jugular vein and bled to death. She was found by the porter who had been sent from the ward to find her (personal communication, Dr Bob Clarke [great nephew], December 2017). Four years later and a world apart, a Russian doctor, Dr Veressayev, wrote about the high rate of suicide among his classmates, 10% of whom died by their own hand.¹ Why these doctors chose to kill themselves can only be surmised. Jeannie did not write a suicide note, but we know from her letters to her family that she had a tough time during her medical school training. As the only woman in her year, and only the third woman to qualify as a doctor in Scotland, she had to be taught separately for much of her training, was mocked and laughed at by her male colleagues, and we can only imagine how she would have been received by the all-female nursing staff. Family folklore tells of Jeannie experiencing the death of a child during her first week on duty and the guilt …