Question” Can a psychiatrist claim an insanity defense?
Yes, and much more skillfully than a layman.
However, one crazy ex-girlfriend claimed she went on to her master's in psychology because she wanted to figure ME out. This was about a year after we'd even stopped dating.
Interestingly, she once asked me, in-between her manic-depressive, bi-polar states (she cycled about every three days—one day pretty good, two days of hell with whomever she was around) if she was “being a psycho-hose beast” (an apparent nod to Wayne's World).
The Straight Dope: Do dentists have the highest suicide rate
This is one of those dodgy things that "everybody knows." And not just the uninformed public, either--dentists themselves believe it. Since the 1960s dental journals have been carrying articles with headlines like "The Suicidal Professions." Dozens of studies have looked at suicide not only among dentists but among health-care workers in general. With few exceptions, research over the past 40 years has found that dentists (and doctors) take their own lives at a higher-than-average rate. But how much higher? To hear some tell it, you'd better not leave these guys in a room alone...What's the most suicidal occupation? I won't venture an opinion for the world of work overall, but among health-care types it may well be shrinks. In a study of 18,730 physician deaths from 1967 to 1972 (men and women), psychiatrists accounted for 7 percent of the total but 12 percent of the 593 suicides (source: Rich et al., cited above).
more importantly, can he be his own expert witness?