Anyone who’s ever worked knows that at some point a job can get stressful, but most of
us get through it and live to fight another day.
The Big Think tells us, echoing a study from the University of Manchester in England, “If
you work in a low-paying job you hate, you are likely more chronically stressed out than
if you were just unemployed.”
In that case it’s not only the job that causes mental stress, but the fact it pays
little money.
It might be worse at the bottom of the pay-scale when you are being screamed at all day, but
also desperately need the job.
But those at the top of the food chain have their own stresses, and some other jobs just
offer very challenging experiences.
We’ll look at the worst, in this episode of the Infographics Show, Jobs that literally
make you kill yourself.
Before we start, we should tell you that we are of course talking about jobs with the
highest suicide rates.
These rates might change year-to-year and statistics will change from source to source,
and which country those sources come from.
That said, there can be no doubt the following occupations see many people taking their own
lives.
Construction Worker In the UK at least, we are told that for men
low-paid construction work has the highest suicide rate.
The Office of National Statistics reported that men doing this job are three times more
likely to take their own life than the average UK citizen.
In 2015 the people in this job represented 17 percent of all suicides in the country.
The US report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention also said something
similar, stating that “low paid, manual laborers who face uncertain employment and
typically work on their own are prone to committing suicide.”
Farmers In many reports we found, farmers were taking
their lives at a rate higher than people in other professions.
This also fell into low-skilled agricultural work in some reports.
But it’s not just the laborers.
The Farm Safety Foundation, which was created to focus on the mental health of farmers in
the UK, said if you harvest crops or rear animals you are in a high suicide bracket
for farming.
It said that changing markets, disease of livestock, failing crops and even Brexit was
taking its toll on farmers.
The charity also added, “In an industry with the poorest safety record of any occupation
in the UK, stress is often a key factor in many of the accidents, injuries and illnesses
taking place on farms.”
The CDC in one U.S. report, albeit a few years old, said that agricultural workers, farmers,
fishermen, lumberjacks, had a suicide rate of a staggering 85 per 100,000.
This is compared to the average rate of 21.3.
Factory work A lot of mind-numbing work we may have done
in the past is now automated.
Imagine standing on a conveyor belt production line for eight hours or more?
The UK office of national statistics calls this work “process plant occupations”,
but that could mean many jobs.
Still, if your job falls into that category you have much more chance of committing suicide
than the average UK citizen.
The CDC puts “Production and factory workers” high, too, with a suicide rate of 35 per 100,000.
We might remember those stories a few years ago about suicide nets being installed at
Foxconn in China where iPhone components are made and the phones are put together.
The Guardian reported, “Worker after worker threw themselves off the towering dorm buildings,
sometimes in broad daylight, in tragic displays of desperation – and in protest at the work
conditions inside.”
It said in one year at one plant, 14 people died from jumping and 20 others had to be
talked down.
Police officers A career website tells us that many cops kill
themselves due to job stress.
This comes from a 2018 article in Men’s Health.
It wrote that according to a 2018 study from the Ruderman Family Foundation the number
of cops that killed themselves when the data was compiled was three times more than those
killed in the line of duty.
According to the article, cops killing themselves is just getting worse in the USA.
Long hours, daily stress dealing with danger, and the tough guys don’t like to talk about
stress apparently.
The article said this about stressed and depressed cops, “Many are haunted by the pervasive
fear that undergoing treatment will have professional repercussions, such as them being passed over
for promotions or removed from patrol work on the street.”
One cop, called Al Hernandez, said that over his 35-year career at the Fresno Police Department
in California, 14 of his colleagues had taken their life.
But that rate seemed high compared with other reports.
A police website we found does say the rate is too high, but 2016 was a good year, as
that year just a few more men died in the line of duty than killed themselves.
Still, police life might not exactly portray Lethal Weapon, as other jobs can be much more
stressful.
The CDC says people in the category of “Firefighters, police, corrections workers, others in protective
services” have a suicide rate of 31 per 100,000.
Bankers Why are so many bankers killing themselves,
asked the New York Post.
The CDC says stockbrokers are also killing themselves at an unusually high rate.
There are many reports about this, from Hong Kong to New York to London.
“An investment banker at JP Morgan jumped to his death from the roof of the bank’s
headquarters in Central yesterday,” wrote a Hong Kong newspaper.
“Deutsche Bank executive Broeksmit was found dead at his South Kensington home after police
responded to reports of a man found hanging at a house,” wrote the UK media in 2014.
He had hanged himself in an apartment that cost $4,500,000 in 2000.
It’s hard right at the top, too.
In 2016 Martin Senn, the former Chief Executive of Zurich Insurance, took his own life after
a takeover bid didn’t work out and the company saw some heavy losses.
Soldiers We all handle stress differently, but witnessing
the ravages of war doesn’t sit well with even the toughest or most impassive of us.
In fact, the stats are very disturbing if you believe the United States Department of
Veterans Affairs.
It said in 2016, 20 veterans killed themselves every day.
This was 18 percent of suicides in the USA, but military vets only make up 8 percent of
the population.
This is much higher than the average in the USA, and while most of the jobs we have discussed
up until now were filled by males, women in the military kill themselves at a high rate,
too.
According to one Academic research paper we found, the rate has climbed much higher since
2005.
U.S. veterans magazine backs that up, stating, “There’s clearly a serious issue with
suicides among active duty military service members, veterans and their families, and
it’s one that we are passionate about addressing.”
This was a quote in the article from a charity that helped U.S. veterans.
Creatives The CDC puts many jobs in one category, those
of “artists, designers, entertainers, athletes, media.”
Well, we all know about the tormented artist, and so many of them either doing what Kurt
Cobain did or virtually drinking themselves to death like Amy Winehouse.
According to statistics, if you are in this line of work you are much more likely to commit
suicide.
The Telegraph tells us that “tortured geniuses” have a much higher chance of killing themselves
than the average dullard.
Whether it’s Hunter S. Thompson with a 45.
Caliber handgun or Virginia Woolf walking into a river with stones in her pockets, it
seems that having natural intelligence and hyper-sensitivity can be a hard thing.
Woolf wrote in her suicide note.
“I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate.
So, I am doing what seems the best thing to do.”
But it’s in the statistics, too, with one report telling us, “For the first time reliable
data has shown that the suicide rate among people working in creative roles is significantly
higher than the national average.”
Care workers This is high for both men and women, with
UK statistics telling us care workers are twice as likely to kill themselves as the
average person working in the country.
It depends what kind of care, but reports state that in the UK many people such as physicians
simply burn-out from the number of hours they work.
The Lancet tells us, “The rate of depressive disorders among health-care workers compared
with the general population is alarming.”
It’s the same in the U.S. according to The Hill.
One article opens with, “As America focuses on one epidemic — the opioid crisis — another
goes entirely ignored.”
That’s the mental health of care workers.
The article was written by a health care worker in 2018.
Amazingly, she wrote, “I have lost six colleagues to suicide — five physicians and one physician
assistant.”
She wrote that those hardly in the game, the junior doctors, were depressed and suicide
risks.
She also said that while the police and military are now realizing suicide is a big problem,