Abstract
Suicide is a major public health concern in Japan. This study aimed to characterize the trends in suicide mortality in Japan by method since 1979. Using data from the Japan vital registration system, we calculated age-standardized rates of suicide mortality separately by sex and method. We conducted a log-linear regression of suicide mortality rates separately by sex, and linear regression analysis of the proportion of deaths due to hanging, including a test for change in level and trend in 1998. While crude suicide rates were static over the time period, age-adjusted rates declined. The significant increase in suicide mortality in 1998 was primarily driven by large changes in the rate of hanging, with suicide deaths after 1998 having 36.7% higher odds of being due to hanging for men (95% CI: 16.3–60.8%), and 21.9% higher odds of being due to hanging for women (95% CI: 9.2–35.9%). Hanging has become an increasingly important method for committing suicide over the past 40 years, and although suicide rates have been declining continuously over this time, more effort is needed to prevent hanging and address the potential cultural drivers of suicide if the rate is to continue to decline in the future.
Highlights
Suicide is a major public health concern
Histories of medical disorders such as depression, mood disorder, and cognitive impairment have been identified as important risk factors for suicide [2], but sociocultural factors are likely to play a major role in suicide epidemiology
Data on suicide mortality were obtained from the vital statistics registration of the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) in Japan [6]
Summary
Suicide is a major public health concern. In 2016, around 800,000 suicide deaths occurred worldwide, with an annual global age-standardized suicide rate of 10.53 per 100,000 [1]. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among people aged 15–29 years, and it accounts for about. Histories of medical disorders such as depression, mood disorder, and cognitive impairment have been identified as important risk factors for suicide [2], but sociocultural factors are likely to play a major role in suicide epidemiology. The global age-standardized suicide rate fell 26% (23% in men and 32% in women) from 2000 to 2012, but this pattern varies by country or region [3]. Little is known about the reason for large spatial and temporal variations in suicide rates
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