The impaired physician: a medical and social dilemma.

Psychological and emotional impairment among physicians represents a serious, widespread, and difficult problem. For unclear reasons, it has been problematic to effectively identify and treat this group of professionals whose performance is so intimately associated with the health and wellbeing of the general population. The severity of the problem, the resistance to treatment which seems evident from the data presented, and the fact that most of the conditions afflicting physicians are treatable and reversible, compels us to seek a viable solution. Diligence in the pursuit of understanding and correction of the dilemma is a social and personal imperative.