A Critical Review of ‘Regional Variation in Suicide Rates in Sri Lanka Between 1955 and 2011: A Spatial and Temporal Analysis’

Abstract

This paper hopes to review the article written by D.W. Knipe and et all (Knipe, Padmana than, Muthuwatta, Metcalfe & Gunnell, 2017) on ‘Regional variation in suicide rates in Sri Lanka between 1955 and 2011: a spatial and temporal analysis’ which discusses about the fluctuations in suicide rates in Sri Lanka between the years of 1955-2011. The article is written using both qualitative and quantitative methods and it puts emphasis on the co-relationship between the ease of access to pesticides and suicide rates. It uses secondary data to analyze and evaluate the suicide rates of the country with the intent of finding out the relationship between the ease of access to pesticides and its effects on the suicide rate in the country. The 1960s and 1970s showed a dramatic increase in the suicide rates and academics and health advocates at the time pointed to the introduction of highly hazardous pesticides as the culprit. Since all of the data that they have used stems from secondary and which are gathered from and up to the year 2011 one may not be able to have an understanding on impact of the civil conflict that the country faced for three decades on the suicides rates. Suicide rates in Sri Lanka are often calculated by using the Department of Police data, as it is collected nationally and many deaths by suicide occur in the community rather than in hospitals. The quality of the suicide data in Sri Lanka is unlikely to have changed over time, and there have been no research studies which have explicitly investigated whether there are cases of under-reporting in the police statistics. The most problematic issue regarding the article is that, from the outset the authors have not put any or much emphasis on why people commit suicide by using pesticides. It is in any even unsafe or unorthodox to assume that, just because of people having access to pesticides itself is a direct contributory factor for the fluctuations in suicide rates where one can never be blindfolded on other relative issues such as economical, sociological, political, cultural, ethnic and religious factors.