Do hot spots of deprivation predict the rates of suicide within London boroughs?

Abstract

Introduction The ecological associations between suicide rates and different indices of deprivation within London have been investigated at least for half a century. In the present study, the association between rates of suicide with newly developed hot spots of deprivation index within London boroughs have been studied taking into account the results of the spatial dependency between suicide rates in nearby boroughs. Methods Suicide data were provided by the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness. The hot spots index of deprivation and the population counts were provided by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Region (DETR) and Office for the National Statistics (ONS), respectively. Results The results show that there is no strong spatial dependency between suicide rates in the London boroughs, the ‘hot spots’ index of deprivation predicts the rates of suicide in males 30–49, better than other age and sex groups. The rate of suicide decreases with decreasing deprivation as indicated by the ‘hot spots’ index. Conclusion These findings suggest that at the London boroughs the ‘hot spots’ index of deprivation (together with other socio-economic and social fragmentation indices) should be considered as a potential explanatory variable to explain the effects of age on rates of suicide in men and women.