--- title: 27% of Medical Students Are Depressed description: Medical students and doctors in training, called residents, are two to five times more likely to have depression than the general population canonical: https://time.com/4591919/medical-school-depression-suicide/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-06T17:43:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T02:10:03.567Z article:section: Health og:title: 27% of Medical Students Are Depressed og:description: The mental health of doctors suffers years before they get an MD og:url: https://time.com/4591919/medical-school-depression-suicide/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt58a51069a7ef58b0/6988b0e3cd1bba67987034f4/stethoscope.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5121 og:image:height: 2881 og:image:alt: Stethoscope og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 27% of Medical Students Are Depressed twitter:description: The mental health of doctors suffers years before they get an MD twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt58a51069a7ef58b0/6988b0e3cd1bba67987034f4/stethoscope.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 27% of Medical Students Are Depressed > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 6, 2016 5:43 PM UTC  Stethoscope Stethoscope Getty Images  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 6, 2016 5:43 PM UTC Doctors are health professionals, yet they have far higher rates of depression than the average person. According to a new analysis, that elevated risk is present even before they become doctors, back when they’re in medical school. In the new [research](http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/10.1001/jama.2016.17324?utm%5Fsource=Silverchair%5FInformation%5FSystems&utm%5Fcampaign=FTM%5F12012016&utm%5Fcontent=news%5Freleases&cmp=1&utm%5Fmedium=email) published in the _Journal of the American Medical Association_, researchers analyzed nearly 200 studies of 129,000 medical students in 47 countries. They found that 27% of medical students had depression or symptoms of it, and 11% reported suicidal thoughts during medical school. Medical students were two to five times more likely to have depression than the general population; their depression prevalence ranged from 9%-56%. Despite these alarming numbers, few medical students sought treatment from a healthcare provider. “Only 16% of the medical students who screened positive actually saw someone,” says study author Dr. Douglas Mata, a pathology resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “It’s kind of paradoxical, give that they should recognize the signs better than anyone.” Last year, Mata and his team discovered a [similarly high rate of depression](http://time.com/4140497/medical-doctors-residents-depression-mental-health/?iid=sr-link1) (29%) among residents, freshly minted doctors who practice in a hospital for their graduate medical education after medical school. And in the new data, medical students were just as depressed whether they were in their beginning years, during which they’re in classes, and their later years, when they practice in the hospital. Medical training is notoriously stressful and competitive, requiring long hours of studying, training and staying awake starting in medical school. As TIME explored in an [in-depth story](http://time.com/4012840/doctors-on-life-support/?iid=sr-link2), other factors contributing to doctors’ higher rates of depression include stigma against seeking mental health care and time constraints for doing so. More research is needed to compare medical students to students in other stressful educational institutions, like law or business school. Some studies have shown that they, too, tend to have elevated depression. “Maybe there is something about the inherent stress of being a student that increases your risk that’s not entirely specific to medicine,” Mata says. Unfortunately, though, the problem is more than just a national one. “We tend to think of the United States as having a more unforgiving training system than some other countries, but we actually didn’t see a big difference between the U.S. and all the other countries grouped as a whole,” Mata says. “This is a worldwide problem.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4591919/medical-school-depression-suicide/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4591919/medical-school-depression-suicide/"},"headline":"27% of Medical Students Are Depressed","datePublished":"2016-12-06T17:43:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T02:10:03.567Z","description":"The mental health of doctors suffers years before they get an MD","url":"https://time.com/4591919/medical-school-depression-suicide/","keywords":["medicine","Depression","Mental Health","Suicide","Stress","Doctor","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt58a51069a7ef58b0/6988b0e3cd1bba67987034f4/stethoscope.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt58a51069a7ef58b0/6988b0e3cd1bba67987034f4/stethoscope.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Stethoscope","caption":"Stethoscope","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/medicine/","name":"medicine"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4591919/medical-school-depression-suicide/","name":"27% of Medical Students Are Depressed"}}]}] ```