Suicide Among Professional Divers

[Trace Malinowski]

Trace, that's an interesting question. An article that looks at causes of death among professional divers in Norway:

Mortality among professional divers in Norway - PubMed

Overall, mortality in professional divers was lower than that of the general population. However, professional divers had a higher risk of dying from work-related accident or suicide.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

One needs to consider other factors aside from diving among this population, which can be very difficult to tease out.

Buzzacott and Denoble (both of DAN) looked at diving as a possible suicide method but it's not the same as looking at divers who commit suicide:

The epidemiology of murder and suicide involving scuba diving - PubMed

Murder and suicide in involving scuba are extremely rare. A systematic search identified 19 published studies describing 4,339 recreational diving fatalities occurring between 1956 and 2011. Case vignettes identified three possible murders and eight likely suicides. These are summarised and the...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Best regards,
DDM

This is the kind of thing I was curious about. I wasn't suggesting that divers use diving as a method of suicide as maybe some people thought, merely wondering if professional divers might be prone to suicide because I knew three who killed themselves (knife, drug OD, diving) and if so why? Lifestyle? Gases? Pressure? Personality? Subclinical DCS? That kind of thing. I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

 

[Duke Dive Medicine]

This is the kind of thing I was curious about. I wasn't suggesting that divers use diving as a method of suicide as maybe some people thought, merely wondering if professional divers might be prone to suicide because I knew three who killed themselves (knife, drug OD, diving) and if so why? Lifestyle? Gases? Pressure? Personality? Subclinical DCS? That kind of thing. I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

Of course! It's a good question worthy of consideration and there are so many variables to consider. There is a high pressure to perform as a commercial diver; you're basically selling your good health. It's incredibly competitive as @Akimbo mentioned. The industry is sometimes feast-or-famine and depends on ups and downs of the economy. Lots of travel could lead to broken relationships.

Best regards,
DDM

 

[Bigbella]

Just from personal experience, substance abuse frequently played a significant role among many I knew in commercial diving (scientific and industrial) circles -- anything and everything from tobacco to alcohol and narcotics ( I clearly recall when coke and speed were king and was everywhere to be had); so self-medication and / or various "performance enhancements" were not unknown among those in that very competitive industry -- but whether that was ever intended as an escape from, say, clinical depression, or just out of sheer boredom and isolation in many cases (friends and family working, months at a time, in the North Sea), I couldn't really say.

Thankfully, I know of no one who suicided -- and frankly think that that rate is probably no greater than that of the public at large . . .

 

[rmssetc]

I was wondering if increased nitrogen loads could act as a depressant, if the lifestyle of diving instructors at poverty level contributes to a sense of hopelessness, or if brain damage might come from commercial diving or military diving such as you did involving saturation and life under pressure. I don't know if divers are at a higher risk of suicide or not. I was wondering.

I have absolutely no clue about any physiological affects of diving, and I'm not a medical/social support professional (as my next comments will probably make very clear!).

There may be a selection bias here in that the factors that attract someone to diving and factors that are enhanced in diving professionally are associated with suicidal ideation.

For example:

• Diving (professional or not) is a highly simulating/high-risk activity. While the elevated training of a professional may allow for better risk management, the intrinsic risk factors are still there. One measure of risk-seeking behavior may be the frequency of conducting the activity, even if the participant's skill level and the and the specifics of the activity (ie., daily guiding relatively shallow warm-water vacation dives) mitigate the risk. Therefore, dive professionals may be seeking a high level of risk/stimulation.
• Being a 'recreational dive professional' (as opposed to commercial diver) is widely cited as being financially insecure -- and it must be a tough reminder being surrounded by wealthy people doing the same activity for fun.
• Diving is a physically demanding activity, particularly working in the industry. Even in the absence of any injury, depending on diving professionally for a living may become a reminder of diminishing physical capacity as one ages and may seem like a poor long-term choice.

Those factors (demand for a high level of stimulation, financial stress, physical stress, awareness of aging/mortality) may be correlated with suicide and may be more highly developed in professional divers (and mountain guides, motorcycle racers, professional skiers, etc).

Then add in crappy customers and disillusionment at the realization that being a professional diving instructor isn't as glamorous as it looks in the advertisement....

 

[tursiops]

Then add in crappy customers and disillusionment at the realization that being a professional diving instructor isn't as glamorous as it looks in the advertisement....

I kinda agree with your conclusion, but feel that you are inventing a lot of unlikely and unnecessary maybes in order to get to that conclusion.

Diving is not, for most people, a high-risk activity. It does not even have high physical requirements for most people. Your financial argument is more compelling.

 

[rmssetc]

I kinda agree with your conclusion, but feel that you are inventing a lot of unlikely and unnecessary maybes in order to get to that conclusion.

Yep. If I was doing any more hand-waving here I'd be gaining altitude. I have no academic/professional background in any of this to give a foundation to those hypotheticals that I'm throwing around.

Diving is not, for most people, a high-risk activity. It does not even have high physical requirements for most people.

I submit that diving is, for everyone, a very high-risk activity, just from physics and the fact that we can't breathe underwater without help. The equipment and industry practices and very easy dives for most warm-water-pretty-fishes divers combine to manage the risk very successfully, resulting in a low rate of incidents. People who choose to dive (after the DSD) should be well aware that it's risky -- the types of serious events that can happen are emphasized in OW training.

For a contrast, take skiing -- a very cursory literature review (thanks, google!) suggests a much higher injury rate than for diving...something like 2~5 injuries per 1000 skier-days vs SCUBA (~0.3 injuries per 1000 diver-days), but a much lower fatality rate (80~100 skier deaths annually out of ~400M skier-visits/year) compared to SCUBA (150~175 deaths annually, from about 30M dives/year, or about 15~20x the risk of fatality).

Does this mean that skiing is riskier than diving? Sure, if you're measuring the absolute chance of any reported injury. Does this mean that diving is a higher risk activity? Sure, if you're considering fatalities (and, without any numbers, I'd say that a serious non-fatal DCS/barotrauma incident has a larger affect on long-term quality of life than an ACL tear or collarbone fracture -- the most common serious skiing accidents).

For me, and most people, risk isn't an absolute...it's some kind of combination of "likelihood" and "severity".


I agree that diving doesn't have high physical requirements. That doesn't mean that it isn't physically taxing -- even a relaxing drift dive leaves many people chilled and tired, and the dive professional is doing a lot more work than the customers before they arrive, during the day, and after they leave.

 

[NothingClever]

For the record, I don’t think SB in its current state is beneficial to one’s mental health. While we have some fantastic members posting excellent content, I frequently regret providing sponsorship when I see us jerking the steering wheel towards the ditch. It’s discouraging to come back later only to see we’ve applied more accelerator and our front wheels are just spinning in the ditch. Perusing here to learn and grow requires an inordinate amount of filtration. Full time instructors and store owners already have enough stressors in their lives such that SB poses more harm than good, IMO.

 

[WeRtheOcean]

Oddly enough veterinarians are statistically a high risk suicide group. It’s kind of crazy but documented well enough the mortgage company my girlfriend works for won’t do a business or home loan to veterinarians for that reason.

Reason for suicide: depressed because home ownership was out of reach.

 

[John C. Ratliff]

Yep. If I was doing any more hand-waving here I'd be gaining altitude. I have no academic/professional background in any of this to give a foundation to those hypotheticals that I'm throwing around.

I submit that diving is, for everyone, a very high-risk activity, just from physics and the fact that we can't breathe underwater without help. The equipment and industry practices and very easy dives for most warm-water-pretty-fishes divers combine to manage the risk very successfully, resulting in a low rate of incidents. People who choose to dive (after the DSD) should be well aware that it's risky -- the types of serious events that can happen are emphasized in OW training.

For a contrast, take skiing -- a very cursory literature review (thanks, google!) suggests a much higher injury rate than for diving...something like 2~5 injuries per 1000 skier-days vs SCUBA (~0.3 injuries per 1000 diver-days), but a much lower fatality rate (80~100 skier deaths annually out of ~400M skier-visits/year) compared to SCUBA (150~175 deaths annually, from about 30M dives/year, or about 15~20x the risk of fatality).

Does this mean that skiing is riskier than diving? Sure, if you're measuring the absolute chance of any reported injury. Does this mean that diving is a higher risk activity? Sure, if you're considering fatalities (and, without any numbers, I'd say that a serious non-fatal DCS/barotrauma incident has a larger affect on long-term quality of life than an ACL tear or collarbone fracture -- the most common serious skiing accidents).

For me, and most people, risk isn't an absolute...it's some kind of combination of "likelihood" and "severity".


I agree that diving doesn't have high physical requirements. That doesn't mean that it isn't physically taxing -- even a relaxing drift dive leaves many people chilled and tired, and the dive professional is doing a lot more work than the customers before they arrive, during the day, and after they leave.
(Emphasis added, jcr)

A number of years ago, like in the 1960s, Dr. Stanley Miles gave the diving community a formula concerning dive safety/accidents:

Accident potential = PRF / TMS
Where:
P = Accident Proneness
R = Risk Acceptance
F = Physical Factors
T = Training
M = Maturity
S = Safety Measures

This was in his book, Underwater Medicine. It is not accepted safety theory, but it was proposed specifically for divers and understanding the accident potential for diving. The formula shows that the numerator (accident proneness, risk acceptance and physical factors) can be mitigated by the denominator (training, maturity and safety measures). This is actually one of the better accident models I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a bunch (40+ years in the safety profession). It was his gift to the diving community.

Likelihood and Severity were subsequently incorporated into the Risk Assessement Matrix (2000s). In the safety and health profession, we use this Risk Assessment Matrix to determine priorities in mitigating hazards in the workplace. This one comes from the American National Standards Institute's Z10-2005 Occupational Safety and Health Management Systems (which has subsequently been updated to ANSI Z10-2019). (See the image below.)

Now, how does this concept get into the problem of suicide; it doesn’t. Other aspects involve mental problems such as depression that influences suicide. I’ve looked over Google Scholar, and it appears that the potential for brain injury and for depression influences suicide rates in different vocations.

SeaRat

 

[NothingClever]

I dunno…

I think you could make an argument that training and maturity, when perceived more broadly, could be factors in mitigation of depression that precipitates suicide.

This would be akin to the expanded definition of ‘fitness’ - physical, spiritual, professional and financial. All types must be proactively pursued and balanced.

So, ‘training’ wouldn’t just be pursuit of a PADI instructor certification but rather training in how to thrive in an industry of uncertainty and diffuse recognition for accomplishments. ‘Maturity’ wouldn’t just be sound judgment about DM duties but also about properly (soberly) valuing the intrinsic and extrinsic factors in one’s passion-turned-career.