Abstract
BackgroundSuicide is a major global health problem, especially among youth. Suicide is known to be associated with a variety of social, economic, political and religious factors, vary across geographical and cultural regions. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of socioeconomic factors on suicide mortality rate across different regions in Iran.MethodsThe data on distribution of population and socio-economic factors (such as unemployment rate, divorce rate, urbanization rate, average household expenditure etc.) at province level were obtained from the Statistical Centre of Iran and the National Organization for Civil Registration. The data on the annual number of deaths caused by suicide in each province was extracted from the published reports of the Iranian Forensic Medicine Organization. We used a decomposition model to distinguish between spatial and temporal variation in suicide mortality.ResultsThe average rate of suicide mortality was 5.5 per 100,000 population over the study period. Across the provinces (spatial variation), suicide mortality rate was positively associated with household expenditure and the proportion of people aged 15–24 and older than 65 years and was negatively associated with the proportion of literate people. Within the provinces (temporal variation), higher divorce rate was associated with higher suicide mortality. By excluding the outlier provinces, the results showed that in addition to the proportion of people aged 15–24 and older than 65, divorce and unemployment rates were also significant predictors of spatial variation in suicide mortality while divorce rate was associated with higher suicide mortality within provinces.ConclusionThe findings indicate that both spatial and temporal variations in suicide mortality rates across the provinces and over time are determined by a number of socio-economic factors. The study provides information that can be of importance in developing preventive strategies.
Highlights
Suicide is a major global health problem, especially among youth
Evidence shows that disability adjusted life years (DALYs) loss contributed to self-harm has decreased by 17% from 2005 to 2015 and that the death rates due to self-harm have decreased by 16.3%
This study aims to investigate the effects of socio-demographic and economic factors on suicide mortality rate across and within different regions in Iran
Summary
Suicide is a major global health problem, especially among youth. Suicide is a major global health problem, especially among youth, where suicide is in the top three causes of death in people aged 10–24 years [1]. Haghparast-Bidgoli et al International Journal for Equity in Health (2018) 17:77 than the average global suicide rates, ranging from 0.55 to 5.4 per 100,000 population [16]. Mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety in the EMR region are present at a higher rate than average global level [9]
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