A 2025 JADA study confirmed dentists die by suicide at twice the national rate. Frank King asks the harder question: now that we know, what does the oral health community do with that data?

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In October 2025, the Journal of the American Dental Association published a study that confirmed something the dental profession had long suspected but rarely said out loud: dentists die by suicide at roughly twice the rate of the general U.S. population. Male dentists carry a proportionate mortality ratio of 2.01. Female dentists, 2.15. Both figures have trended upward since 1995.
The study was thorough. The methodology was sound. And within the oral health research community, it was noticed — because this is a community that pays attention to peer-reviewed data.
What I want to ask is a different question: What do we do now that we know?
I am not a dental researcher. I am a person who lives with Major Depressive Disorder and Chronic Suicidal Ideation, who spent 40 years in professional standup comedy and more than a decade speaking to high-stress professional communities about suicide prevention. I know what it looks like when a room full of high-achieving, precision-oriented people realize they have been quietly drowning while everyone around them appears, from the outside, to be fine.
The Specific Texture of Dentistry’s Suffering
Dentistry has a specific texture of suffering. The financial weight of $300,000 or more in student debt. The physical demands of work that requires sustained precision in postures the human body was not designed to hold for eight hours. The emotional labor of managing patients who are frightened, in pain, or hostile. The perfectionism that the profession selects for and then accelerates. And underneath all of it, a professional culture where the expectation has long been: carry it quietly, and carry it alone.
The ADA’s 2024 Trend Report found 82% of dentists reporting major stress and career burnout. CareQuest Institute research found 71% of oral health providers reporting increased burnout since the pandemic. These are not the numbers of a profession experiencing ordinary occupational stress. These are the numbers of a profession under sustained, compounding pressure — with insufficient structural support and an enormous cultural barrier to asking for help.
That barrier has a name. Stigma.
What the Infrastructure Says — and What It Can’t Do Alone
Research on dental professional mental health consistently identifies stigma as the primary obstacle between distress and help-seeking. The FDI World Dental Federation has explicitly called for national dental associations to normalize mental health conversations in workplace contexts and make support resources more accessible. The American Dental Association has expanded its Well-Being Index to all dental team members, regardless of membership status. The federal government passed the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act specifically to reduce healthcare worker suicide and burnout.
The infrastructure of intervention is forming. What still needs to change is the culture inside the room.
This is not a problem that more research will solve on its own. At some point, the oral health community — including the researchers who produce the data and the educators who shape the next generation of clinicians — has to look at what the numbers say and decide to start talking about it differently. Not in the abstract. In the faculty meeting. At the conference. In the lab.
What the Conversation Actually Looks Like
There is a version of this conversation that doesn’t require anyone to perform vulnerability they don’t feel. It starts with acknowledgment: this profession is hard, the data confirms it, and none of us is immune. It continues with something simpler than therapy — just the willingness to notice when a colleague is not okay, and to say something.
The 2025 JADA study gave the dental community the evidence. The 2027 AADOCR Annual Meeting in Minneapolis is an opportunity to do something with it.
What happens in that room is a choice.