Doctors have far higher rates of drug abuse, suicide and mental illness than the rest of the community, an Australian study has found.
And the most likely candidates are young, successful doctors in their 30s with a wife and children.
Many were so dependent on injected drugs that they had their prescribing rights for addictive drugs withdrawn, after their abuse became known.
The report claimed that just over 100 of the 23,000 registered doctors in New South Wales had a serious drug problem, many of them addicted to pethidine.
Ten doctors in the study died, including three who committed suicide. There were at least five more suicide attempts and 17 left the profession altogether.
'Once you become a doctor it is hard to stop being one,' explained the report's co-author, Dr James Bell.
