Do Archivists commit suicide more often than other?

[Thomas Wolf]

After 2 suicides and mysterious death from another collegue I´m wondering whether archivist is a risky job ?
Is our profession dangerous?
Look a special kind of people for an archival job?
Are these funnies questions?
What are Your suggestions about it?

Look also: http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/6056977/ (Germ.)

[Christian van der Ven]

Thomas, were those suicide cases in any way related to their profession? My guess is that there were other sad circumstances that led to their actions, and that it is merely a coincidence that both of them were an archivist...

I don't considder our jobs dangerous, and I don't considder myself special either! ;-)

[Kimberly O'Sullivan]

I wonder if as Christian said these were just sad co-incidences or.....if their personal unhappiness was compounded by social isolation at work. I'll explain. I am an archivist and have specialised in working in non-archival institutions and companies. As these were archival jobs in non-archival businesses I was the only archivist and often worked alone in 'my' archives. Sometimes I would go all day not speaking to anyone and would only see other employees at meetings or in lunch rooms. If I went out for lunch I didn't see them all day. I used to make it a policy to take in a small radio as the silence I found was making me feel depressed. I now work as an archivist/historian in local government but am located in a public library so it is a very social environment which suits my personality much more. I think I felt quite cut off in those other jobs and I remember feeling quite sad many times. If someone was already sad, or felt not connected to others, being in a quiet socially isolating job would compound this. What do others think?

[Ian McCulloch]

I saw a list of suicide rates broken down by profession (for the UK) in a newspaper some time ago. It must have been between 1991 and 1994, because I was then living in a flat above a vet's, and vets were no.1 on the list. It must also have been in the Guardian, because that is the only newspaper I ever buy. Doctors were no.2, and clearly these professions have easy access to the means of their own destruction (plus other social complications, not worth going into here) but I was surprised to see that librarians were in the top 10, about no.7 I think, particularly because I was a librarian at the time. Vets have discussed this amongst themselves, informally, and within their professional groups, but I haven't seen anything similar for librarians or archivists. I had a quick google to try to find that list, but failed, not much of an advertisement for my research skills!

[Joshua Ng]

I guess it has something to do with the nature of the kind of work an archivist do - tedious.