A new service to cater for the occupational health needs of the State's 2,500 general practitioners was launched at the weekend.
Dr Andree Rochfort told the ICGP's annual meeting in Kilkenny that the health service lagged far behind other employers in looking after its employees' health and safety.
A 1996 UK study showed that doctors were up to five times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Family doctors have a much higher incidence of depression, alcohol and drug abuse. A recent Irish study found that GPs were exposed to significant levels of violence as part of their work.
"Doctors have a difficulty with recognition and perception of their own illnesses, they diagnose and treat themselves and they often delay seeking medical help. They make reluctant patients," she told the meeting.
Dr Rochfort, who is both an occupational physician and a GP, has been appointed to oversee the development of a comprehensive health and support service for family doctors. GPs needed an information and advisory service, within a nationally organised structure which could guarantee absolute confidentiality, she said.
One of the barriers to good health identified by Dr Rochfort is the lack of an adequate locum service which doctors could rely on at times of personal illness. In a separate initiative, plans for a locum service were announced.
Locumotion, a company based at the UCD Campus Innovation Centre in Belfield, provides a quality GP locum service and looks after the locum's professional educational needs. Dr Ray Power plans to recruit Dutch, Danish, Australian and New Zealand GPs for the new service, which will be linked to the Centre for Medical Education at UCD.
The new service is based on a Western Australian initiative, through which young Irish doctors have provided locums for rural practitioners in Australia for the last six years.
The Western Health Board has contracted the new company to provide 25 weeks of locum cover to rural GPs in the west of Ireland this year. Discussions are ongoing with the Southern, Mid-Western and North Western Health Boards.
Delegates welcomed both of these initiatives, which are widely seen as ensuring that patient care does not become compromised as a result of doctors' ill health.