Abstract
Background:Economic hardship is an established suicidogenic factor. However, very little is known about whether financial difficulties in terms of debt problems, specifically, is related to suicide. This would seem to be an important research gap, not least at a time when the repercussions of the global financial crisis are still being felt by many people.Aims:This study sets out to examine whether experiencing financial indebtedness is related to suicide.Methods:For this purpose, people aged between 18 and 64 with a registration date for a debt in the Swedish Enforcement Authority register between 2015 and 2017 (n = 180,842) are followed up for a 1-year period for death by suicide and compared with a sample from the general Swedish population (n = 928,265). The analysis is based on penalized maximum likelihood logistic regressions.Results:Those who had experienced financial indebtedness were two and a half times more likely to commit suicide than those who had not lived through this experience (OR = 2.50), controlling for several demographic, socio-economic, and mental health conditions prior to the date of the registration at the Enforcement Authority.Conclusion:Debt repayment problems have a significant and detrimental impact on individuals’ risk of committing suicide, even when several other socioeconomic risk factors are controlled for. The results reinforce the importance of ongoing attempts to remove the issue of debt problem from its status as a rather hidden suicidogenic risk factor.
Highlights
The evidence base for linking debt with suicide is not strong (Haw et al, 2015)
This is quite troublesome, not least at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is unleashing the largest contraction in economic activity since the Great Depression (United Nations Development Programme, 2020), the repercussions of the latest global financial crisis are still being felt by many people (Di Leo et al, 2018), and voices are being raised to make ‘tackling debt and financial distress’ a new strand in suicide prevention (Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, 2016)
The exposed group examined in this study includes all adults 18 to 64 years, comprising women and men with a registration date for a debt in the Swedish Enforcement Authority (Kronofogden) register between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2017.1 With the help of Statistics Sweden, the data from the exposed group in the Enforcement Authority register have been linked to several other national registers
Summary
The evidence base for linking debt with suicide is not strong (Haw et al, 2015). Capturing and following representative and sizeable groups of individuals who have experienced financial hardship using traditional surveys has proven difficult (Oksanen et al, 2016; Webley & Nyhus, 2001) – and there is a lack of clarity as to how financial indebtedness should be understood, that is, when debt becomes a problem (European Commission, 2008; Haw et al, 2015) This is quite troublesome, not least at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is unleashing the largest contraction in economic activity since the Great Depression (United Nations Development Programme, 2020), the repercussions of the latest global financial crisis are still being felt by many people (Di Leo et al, 2018), and voices are being raised to make ‘tackling debt and financial distress’ a new strand in suicide prevention (Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, 2016). The results reinforce the importance of ongoing attempts to remove the issue of debt problem from its status as a rather hidden suicidogenic risk factor
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