Female doctors are significantly more likely to die by suicide than women in the general population, but the same is not true of male doctors, a new study shows.

The US research indicates that female doctors have a 54% higher age-standardised suicide mortality ratio (SMR) compared with women on average, but male doctors’ SMR is 33% lower than for men in the general population.

Investigators, led by Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, drew on data from nine global studies and data sets in their meta-analysis on doctor suicide, the first published since 2004.

The studies spanned 30 years and eight countries. The sample included only 547 male doctor suicides and 162 female doctor suicides because of the researchers’ stringent selection criteria.