Anu Jogesh, New Delhi: It's a grim side of the medical profession. A doctor from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) committed suicide two days ago. And he is not the first. So why are those who've sworn to save lives suddenly taking their own?

It’s the healers today, in need of medical help. On Friday Sunil Kushwaha, a resident doctor at AIIMS took his life.

He left no suicide note for his grieving wife. But friends know he was stressed, and was even looking to quit the neurosurgery department.

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In what's become a disturbing trend, Sunil is the third doctor to have committed suicide at AIIMS in the last three years. And that's just the tip of the problem for the institute.

"We never expected Sunil to go for such extreme step because my personal knowledge is that 2-3 residents other in that department taking anti-depressants in neurosurgery, " says doctor Anil Sharma senior resident AIIMS.

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So what is it that's driving scores of doctors at AIIMS to depression and ultimately suicide?

"There is an element if overworking and stress in neurosurgery. So suicide attempts more. They're working 40 hours at a stretch. They also suffer some sort of humiliation. Residents candid to say that they are humiliated in front of patients, names said to them, they are abused," says doctor Sharma.

The problem today is most prevalent among medical students and resident doctors confined to the hierarchical and competitive structure of government hospitals.

A study by AIIMS as far back as 1996 showed that 40 per cent of its senior doctors in emergency medicine faced stress levels well within the warning zone. AIIMS has since tried to put some preventive measures in place.

Dr Rajesh Sagar of department of Psychiatry says, "We made two resource persons across 40 departments to identify doctors with such problems and help them out."

But the latest case shows that these measures are not enough. An institute that treats as many as 5,000 patients everyday clearly needs to pay attention to its own stressed and harassed doctors.

After all of the lakhs of people who think of ending their life, doctors with their medical paraphernalia are three times more likely to actually commit the act.