Suicide by job: Farmers, lumberjacks, fisherman top list
NEW YORK (AP) — Farmers, lumberjacks and fishermen kill themselves most often, according to a large new study of workers in the U.S. that showed enormous differences of suicide rates across jobs.
Researchers found the highest suicide rates in manual laborers who work in isolation and face unsteady employment.
Dentists, doctors and other health care professionals had an 80 percent lower suicide rate than the farmers, fishermen and lumberjacks.
Thursday's report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is perhaps the largest U.S. study to compare suicide rates among occupations.
Because of the limited data, they could only calculate suicide rates for broad occupation categories, but not for specific jobs.
The categories, which sometimes seem to group professions that have little to do with each other, like athletes and artists, are based on federal classifications used for collecting jobs-related data.
Public attention often focuses on teens and college students, but the highest numbers and rates are in middle-aged adults.
The highest female suicide rate was seen in the category that includes police, firefighters and corrections officers.
In the 1980s, media reports detailed high suicide rates in Midwestern farmers.
Police, firefighters, corrections workers, others in protective services; 31.
Corporate executives and managers, advertising and public relations; 20