The association between emotional and instrumental social support and risk of suicide death: A population-based cohort study

Abstract

Suicide is an important public health issue and previous studies have suggested that social support can one preventive factor. However, the association between emotional and instrumental social support and suicide death has not been investigated in detail. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between each type of social support and suicide death based on a population-based cohort study. We analyzed follow-up data for 47,223 subjects (aged ≥40 y) participating in a community-based, prospective cohort study. At the baseline, the subjects were asked five questions about social support. The end point of the study was suicide mortality, based on data from the National Vital Statistics. The Cox model was used to estimate the multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios of suicide death. In addition, stratified analysis was conducted to test the interaction of each type of social support with gender (male/female) and age (<65/≥65 y) separately. Among 320,880 person-years of follow-up, 90 cases of suicide death were documented. There were significant association between instrumental social support and lower risk of suicide death, and the hazard ratio was 0.60 (95% CI: 0.38–0.94). Emotional social support was also associated with a lower risk of suicide death, but not to a significant degree, and the hazard ratio was 0.70 (95% CI: 0.42–1.17). It is suggested that instrumental social support was significantly associated with a lower risk of suicide death, and emotional social support tended to be associated with a lower risk of suicide death.