Why are pastors committing suicide?

So when you come out as occasionally depressed and suicidal, you get sent links to articles. "Why Pastors Are Committing Suicide" doesn't actually tell us why pastors are committing suicide; it doesn't even have any data on whether pastors are committing suicide (other than anecdotes). There is a wee bit of data: 23% of surveyed pastors report self-diagnosing with a mental health problem, and 12% obtain an actual diagnosis.

That leaves me wondering whether pastors are committing suicide at any notable clip. I checked with the Google and found no empirically useful data, so, by modern standards, that means there is none. I can believe, however, that many pastors, particularly in evangelical Churches, suffer from depression. From the above-linked article:

Knowing someone to reach out to is vital, since most pastors feel they can’t tell their congregations about their mental health struggles. They’re afraid of losing their jobs, not being a good role model, or being inappropriately transparent.

Those are also reasons why pastors suffer from depression. It's not simply that the workload is nuts: you also have to do it all with a smile.

A few years back I was picking up a prescription from the pharmacy while bearing under a perpetual headache which felt like termites eating away at my skull from the inside. (If I remember correctly, it had been going on for about four months.) After the clerk asked me what I did for a living, she said, "Well, smile, pastor!"

Thankfully, the unendurable pain prevented me from gathering the wherewithal to strangle her.

Call me overly sensitive, but I tend to think that people who are not allowed to be normal human beings might occasionally get depressed that they are not allowed to act like normal human beings.