Mortality study of pathologists and medical laboratory technicians.

Membership lists of professional bodies were used to establish study populations of British pathologists (1955-73) and medical laboratory technicians (1963-73). The standardised mortality ratio (SMR) for pathologists was 60 and for medical laboratory technicians 67. Twenty-seven of the 310 deaths were due to suicide. These numbers gave SMRs of 250 for pathologists and 243 for medical laboratory technicians. Suicide was the commonest cause of …