Wealth and Death : Grey areas of suicide
Examining the strongest determinant of deaths due to suicide.
A blog by Lens of Curiosum
"No matter what happens , or how bad it seems today , life does go on and it will be better tomorrow" ~Maya Angelou
Team Credits
Data Extraction and analysis , Writing , Editing : Dagli Devanshi , Vuddemarry Madhurima
Visualization : Vuddemarry Madhurima
Research questions
Is there a positive association between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita of a country and the suicide death rate ?
Is there a difference in this correlation based on data quality?
Correlation between poverty and suicide death rates observed in India.
Self harm is a manifestation of severe mental illness which can be prevented by adequate treatment and rehabilitation. In 2019 , global suicide death rate was placed at 9% with 77% of the deaths being reported by Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs). Deaths due to self harm can be prevented by timely interventions through psychiatrists and rehabilitation. LMICs report <0.5 psychiatrists per 100,000 population which is way lower than the standard guidelines of 3 psychiatrists per 100,000 population. Lack of capacity building in the health workforce reduces portals for data collection and subsequent understanding of socio-economic determinants of suicide in LMICs
Link to visualization : https://www.datawrapper.de/_/tMezS/
To establish association, suicide death rates were sourced from Global Burden of Diseases 2019.
Data quality of the suicide death rates as assessed by WHO was noted.
Underreporting of suicide deaths corresponded to low data quality.
Countries with a grading lower than 2 are taken for comparison as they are considered here to have better data quality than those >2.
GDP per capita of countries in 2019 was obtained from the World Bank to create comparable world maps.
The world maps aim to correlate the GDP per capita of countries with the suicide death rates.
A sharp contrast is observed in the maps.
Countries having high GDP per capita Norway (75720 USD), USA (65120 USD), Canada (46329 USD) and
Australia (54941 USD) have lower suicide death rates.
Among these countries , Norway (10.5) has the lowest
while USA (13.8) has the highest suicide death rate.
Countries with lower GDP per capita like Belarus (6838 USD), Kazakhstan (9812 USD)
and Ukraine (3661 USD) have higher suicide death rates.
Among these countries , Kazakhstan (23) has the lowest
while Ukraine (31) has the highest suicide death rates.
Link to Visualization : https://www.datawrapper.de/_/ikXJU/
Historically, Suicide deaths have shown a direct positive association to economic crisis.
Asian economic crises
The 1997-98 Asian economic crisis had shown a correlation between suicide, unemployment and National GDP. Japan , Hong Kong and Korea experienced a recession where the GDP was reported as -2.0%, - 5.5% and -6.9% respectively. Suicide rates among males rose by 39% in Japan , 44% in Hong Kong and 45% by Hong Kong. Among females, significant rise was not recorded. Suicide deaths can be attributed to the increase in unemployment rate
Higher the drop in GDP per capita , higher the the rise in suicide death rates.
Poverty and Suicide death rates in South Korea
Suicide death rate in South Korea is at 27.3 deaths per 100,000 recording the highest death rate among all developed High Income Countries (HIC). Deaths are higher in the age group 50-69 (33.2 per 100,000 population). South Korea has the third highest burden of deaths due to suicides recorded to be 73.66 per 100,000 population.
Impact of poverty on suicide risk is reported to be significant among the older adults (aged 60-119 years) in South Korea. Among HICs the adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) for the risk of suicide among males was found to be 1.34 however South Korea recorded a significant AHR of 1.50.
Economic crises and suicide death rate : comparison between High Income Countries (HIC).
Australia
Global financial recession in 2008 had spared Australia of a fall in GDP per capita. However ,unemployment rates had hit a lowest of 4.1% since 1978. Suicide death rates had risen among both employed and unemployed persons. The death rate ratio among unemployed and employed persons was found to be a staggering 4.62 among males and 8.44 among females.
United States of America (USA)
Global financial recession had caused a significant fall in GDP (-4.3%) per capita. An increasing trend of suicide death rates in the working age group (25-65) was observed in USA from 2005 to 2020 through the great depression.
Among the high risk adolescent population economic condition of the school was found to have an impact on suicidal ideation and deaths. Low, middle and high income schools were studied to establish a correlation between school income and suicidal attempts and suicidal thoughts in America.
The prevalence of both, suicidal attempts and suicidal thoughts was found to be higher in low-income schools.
India:
To establish a correlation in India, Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) was obtained from NITI Aayog 2021 report , page 27.
Discrepancy in the MPI index and suicide death rate could be attributed to data quality.
.png)
In India , unemployment and poverty accounted for a significant number of suicide deaths.
Individual categories of unemployed personnel and suicide death rate:
In 2020, 63.3% of the suicide victims were having an annual income of less than 1lakh.
In 2021, unemployed personnel accounted for 7.5% of deaths due to suicide while
housewives accounted for 18.6% of deaths.
Causes of total suicide deaths -
The major cause of suicide was concluded to be family problems which accounted for 33.6%.
Poverty accounted for 1.2% of the total suicide deaths,
bankruptcy and indebtedness accounted for 3.4% of deaths and
unemployment accounted for 2.3% of deaths due to suicide.
Conclusions
Deaths due to Suicide and self-harm are multifactorial in nature.
However , the economic determinants such as poverty and unemployment
show the strongest correlation with deaths due to suicide across the world.
In LMICs and LICs , the correlation is incomplete due to insufficient data.
Robust data collection and analysis is required to identify this association.
Policy action is the immediate need of the hour to directly reduce suicide death rates.
The Mental health Act of 2017 promised free mental health care to poverty line destitute
which is a promising direct step which must be implemented.
Comments
Post a Comment