scholarly journals Economic growth and suicide rate changes: A case in China from 1982 to 2005

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 159-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Zhang ◽  
J. Ma ◽  
C. Jia ◽  
J. Sun ◽  
X. Guo ◽  
...  

AbstractObjectivesIt is to estimate the trend of suicide rate changes during the past three decades in China and try to identify its social and economic correlates.MethodsOfficial data of suicide rates and economic indexes during 1982–2005 from Shandong Province of China were analyzed. The suicide data were categorized for the rural / urban location and gender, and the economic indexes include GDP, GDP per capita, rural income, and urban income, all adjusted for inflation.ResultsWe found a significant increase of economic development and decrease of suicide rates over the past decades under study. The suicide rate decrease is correlated with the tremendous growth of economy.ConclusionThe unusual decrease of Chinese suicide rates in the past decades is accounted for within the Chinese cultural contexts and maybe by the Strain Theory of Suicide.

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (8) ◽  
pp. 745-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fangrong Fei ◽  
Huixin Liu ◽  
Sequoia I Leuba ◽  
Yichong Li ◽  
Ruying Hu ◽  
...  

BackgroundWe investigated the current temporal trends of suicide in Zhejiang, China, from 2006 to 2016 to determine possible health disparities in order to establish priorities for intervention.MethodsWe collected mortality surveillance data from 2006 to 2016 from the Zhejiang Chronic Disease Surveillance Information and Management System from the Zhejiang Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. We estimated region-specific and gender-specific suicide rates using joinpoint regression analyses to determine the average annual percentage change (AAPC) and its 95% CI.ResultsThe crude suicide rate declined from 9.64 per 100 000 people in 2006 to 4.86 per 100 000 in 2016, and the age-adjusted suicide rate decreased from 9.74 per 100 000 in 2006 to 4.14 per 100 000 in 2016. During 2006–2013, rural males had the highest suicide rate, followed by rural females, urban males, and urban females, while after 2013, urban males suicide rates surpassed rural female suicide rates, and became the second highest suicide rate subgroup. The rate of suicide declined in all region-specific and/or gender-specific subgroups except among urban males between 20 and 34 years of age. Their age-adjusted suicide rate AAPC greatly increased to 28.39 starting in 2013 compared with an AAPC of −13.47 from 2006 to 2013.ConclusionsThe suicide rate among young urban males has been alarmingly increasing since 2013, and thus, researchers must develop targeted effective strategies to mitigate this escalating loss of life.


Crisis ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y.E. Razvodovsky

Background: The high suicide rate in Russia and its profound fluctuation over the past decades have attracted considerable interest. There is growing evidence that beverage preference and binge-drinking patterns, i.e., excessive consumption of strong spirits, results in a quicker and deeper level of intoxication, which increases the propensity for the alcohol-related suicide. In line with this evidence, we assumed that higher levels of vodka consumption, in conjunction with binge-drinking patterns, would result in a close, aggregate-level association between vodka sales and suicide in Russia. Aims and Methods: To test this hypothesis, trends in beverage-specific alcohol sales per capita and suicide rates from 1970 to 2005 in Russia were analyzed employing ARIMA time-series analysis. Results: The results of the time-series analysis suggested that a 1 liter increase in overall alcohol sales would result in a 4% increase in the male suicide rate and a 2.8% increase in the female suicide rate; a 1 liter increase in vodka sales would increase the suicide rate by 9.3% for men and by 6% for women. Conclusions: This study replicates previous findings from other settings, which suggest that suicide rates tend to be more responsive to changes in distilled spirits consumption per capita than to the total level of alcohol consumption. Assuming that drinking spirits is usually associated with intoxication episodes, these findings provide additional evidence that the drinking pattern is an important determinant in the relationship between alcohol and suicide. The outcomes of this study also provide support for the hypothesis that suicide and alcohol are closely connected in cultures where an intoxication-oriented drinking pattern prevails and adds to the growing body of evidence that alcohol plays a crucial role in the fluctuation in suicide mortality rates in Russia during recent decades.


2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
John F Connolly ◽  
David Lester

AbstractObjectives: This study was designed to explore the social correlates of the country suicide rate in Ireland.Method: Suicide rates for Irish counties were calculated for the period 1978-1984, a seven year period centred around the 1981 Census.Results: The county suicide rates were positively associated with death rates and the percentage of elderly population and negatively with change in population, the birth rate and the percentage of the population under the age of 15.Conclusions: There is good evidence to suggest that the official suicide rate in Ireland has been underestimated in the past. This underestimation may not have been uniform across all of the counties.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (27_suppl) ◽  
pp. 148-148
Author(s):  
Xuesong Han ◽  
Jingxuan Zhao ◽  
Jiemin Ma ◽  
K Robin Yabroff ◽  
Ahmedin Jemal

148 Background: Cancer patients have an elevated risk of suicide given the prevalent psychological distress, treatment side effects, and uncontrolled pain. This study aims to examine temporal trends in cancer-related suicide in the US during the past two decades in view of progress in psycho-oncology care and symptom control for cancer patients in the country. Methods: Cancer-related suicide was defined as deaths with suicide as the underlying cause and cancer as a contributing cause in the US Multiple Cause of Death Data. We first calculated annual age-standardized cancer-related suicide rates and overall suicide rates from 1999 to 2015. Then, we fitted the log-transformed age-standardized rates to Joinpoint regression models to calculate the annual percentage change (APC) by demographic factors and overall. Results: Among 599,786 suicides in the US from 1999 to 2015, 5,559 were cancer-related. Seventy-three percent of the cancer-related suicides were committed by firearm and 14% were by poisoning. The age-standardized cancer-related suicide rate per 100,000 persons decreased from 0.17 in 1999 to 0.12 in 2015, with an APC of -2.5% (95% CI: -3.3%, -1.7%). In contrast, the age-standardized overall suicide rate per 10,000 persons increased from 13.22 in 1999 to 16.73 in 2015, with APC of 0.9% (95% CI: 0.4%, 1.3%) from 1999 to 2006 and 2.0% (95% CI: 1.7%, 2.2%) from 2006 to 2015. The decline in cancer-related suicide rate was largest among male (APC = -3.1%, 95% CI: -3.9%, -2.3%), 65-74-year-olds (APC = -3.1%, 95% CI: -4.2%, -2.0%), in the South (APC = -4.0%, 95% CI: -5.8%, -2.3%), and in urban area (APC = -3.0%, 95% CI: -4.2%, -1.7%). Conclusions: Despite the continuous increasing overall suicide rates in the US during the past two decades, cancer-related suicide has been decreasing, suggesting an evolving role of psycho-oncology care and symptom control during this period. Well-designed prospective studies are warranted to identify cancer patients at high-risk of suicide and to develop effective care intervention.


Crisis ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 152-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Calliope D Spinellis ◽  
Olga Themeli

Data obtained from the records of the Greek Ministry of Justice revealed that there were 457 deaths in the Greek prison system (which includes prisons, mental hospitals and other general hospitals) over the past 20 years. Of these deaths, 93 were recorded as suicides — an average of 4.65 suicides per year or 112 per 100,000 inmates classified as convicted, on remand or hospitalized. The suicide rates fluctuated widely, from a low rate of 32.3 in 1982 to the incredibly high rate of 390.8 in 1979 (11 total suicides, 10 of which occurred in prison hospitals). The present study, the first of its kind in Greece, was based solely on unpublished prison data, which revealed defects in recording (e. g., 11% of the deaths recorded by the correctional administration remained without specification of cause in the years 1977 through 1996; social and penal demographic data of the inmates who committed suicide were kept unsystematically; detailed information on the circumstances of suicide was not always available, etc.). Despite a noticeable decrease in the suicide rate in the years 1995 and 1996, the limited data suggest that the suicide rate in the Greek prison system has basically remained stable over the past 20 years.


Crisis ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seong Yi Kim ◽  
Myoung-Hee Kim ◽  
Ichiro Kawachi ◽  
Youngtae Cho

Background: Suicide is one of the leading causes of mortality in both South Korea and Japan. Aims: The study aims to compare the descriptive epidemiology of suicide over the last two decades (1985–2006) and to explore the conditions associated with the different distribution of suicides in both countries. Methods: Age-standardized suicide rates were obtained from the OECD Health Data 2009. Age-specific suicide rates for the age groups were calculated from the WHO Mortality Database. Suicide methods were identified based on ICD-10. Results: Through 1980–2000, Japan showed consistently higher suicide rates compared to Korea. However, from the mid-1990s, Korea showed an acute increase of suicides and finally surpassed Japan; the age-standardized suicide rate of Korea increased from 10.2 (per 100,000) in 1985 to 21.5 in 2006, while it slightly increased from 18.4 to 19.1 in Japan. The highest age-specific suicide rate was observed among Japanese men aged 45–64 years and Korean men aged over 64 years. The increase of elderly suicides among Korean women was notable. The gender ratio increased in Japan and decreased in Korea, respectively. The preferred suicide methods were hanging and pesticide poisoning in Korea and hanging in Japan. Because of the limited number of observations, hypothesis testing of specific risk factors was not possible. Conclusions: Age and gender distribution of suicide rates differed considerably between the two countries. Welfare protection throughout the life course in both countries, and pesticide regulation in Korea would be helpful in reducing the burden of suicide mortality in both countries, even if the social values could not be changed in a short time.


2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heba Ezzeldin Helmy

Although some studies have attempted to assess the rural–urban income gap in the 1960s and 1970s, no study has focused on the evolution of the gap over the past 25 years, let alone the evolution in the real differences in per capita income between the rural sector and the urban one. The objective of this study is to fill the gap in the literature on this topic and to appraise the development in the gap – in nominal and real terms – both on the aggregate per capita rural and urban income levels and in different expenditure size classes from 1981 till 2005, a period which witnessed a revolution in the agricultural policies from intensive government intervention to complete liberalization. The results of the study prove that the gap diverged again from 1994 to 2005 after converging from 1981 to 1994. The study also proves that the gap is more apparent in the middle classes rather than the lower ones. Finally, with respect to food consumption the study concluded that a slight gap may exist in favour of rural – and not urban – Egypt.


1990 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 867-871 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dermot Walsh ◽  
Ann Cullen ◽  
Rachel Cullivan ◽  
Brendan O'donnell

SynopsisThis study, reporting a ten-year investigation of suicide in Kildare, found that the suicide rate based on clinical assessment of coroner's records was very close to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) figure for Kildare and for Ireland as a whole for the same period. Dublin data for 1977–1981 confirmed these findings. Since in the 1960s similar clinical assessment concluded that CSO rates underestimated suicide by a factor of two or over, we believe that changes in CSO coding procedures whereby more deaths are now coded to suicide than was the case in the past have resulted in current CSO data reflecting accurately the rate of clinical suicide. There has been more than a three-fold increase in CSO suicide rates in Ireland between 1968 and 1987. Even allowing for improved CSO practices there still remains a considerable excess of suicide deaths which indicates a doubling of ‘real’ suicide in Ireland over these twenty years.


Stanovnistvo ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Goran Penev ◽  
Biljana Stankovic

In 2006 in Serbia, 1444 persons committed suicide (19.5 per 100.000 population. Compared to the early 50s of the 20th century, the number of suicides has nearly doubled, but there has been a moderate decrease in the last 15 years. Similar, but somewhat more moderate tendencies are noted in the change of the value of the suicide rates. The lowest suicide rates were recorded during the 1950s, around 12 per 100.000, and the highest in the last decade of the 20th century when the rate reached 20 suicides per 100.000 inhabitants. The highest suicide rate is among the elderly, and there is also a noticeable tendency of increase in the share of the elderly in the total number of suicides, which is primarily the consequence of intense demographic aging. With youth, the last thirty years note a decline of both the number of suicides and the value of the suicide rates. The number of young people aged 15-24 who have committed suicide in 2006 is less than half of the number from 1971 (decreased from 150 to 66), and the values of suicide rates are also significantly low (decreased from 11.5 to 6.9 per 100.000). Despite certain changes in the values of age-specific suicide rates achieved in the last 50 years, their age patterns of suicide mortality can be characterized as stable. Men are dominant among persons who have committed suicide, with double the number of women, and the highest recorded value of the suicide rate of women never surpassed the value of the lowest suicide rate in men. In terms of marital status, the total rate of suicides is highest with widowers then divorced persons, married persons, and lowest rates are with celibates. In all four groups, suicide rates are at least 3 times higher for men. There is also a clear connection between the level of education and suicide rates for both sexes, with the suicide rate decreasing with higher educational level. In terms of total suicide rate, Serbia is currently in the top half of the European list of countries, closer to countries with highest suicide rates than fifteen years ago. Results achieved in other countries, especially in some former communist countries, imply that defining and conducting a strategy for suicide prevention could have significant effect on the decrease of suicides in Serbia as well.


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