Suicide Rates In Ireland Research Articles

Effect of the Irish Civil War 1922-1923 on suicide rates in Ireland: a retrospective investigation of the archives of the registrar-general for Saorstát Éireann

Introduction: Emile Durkheim differentiated between two types of wars: National and Civil Wars in terms of effect on suicide mortality. This study investigates Durkheim’s assertion by examining the effect of Irish Civil War on the 1882-1928 suicide rates trend.
 Method: We used Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average with Explanatory variables (ARIMAX) design adopting Bayesian approach.
 Results: The odds for death by suicide for the total Irish population during the civil war period were calculated as 0.932 (95% CI: 0.753 to 1.125). This translates to a reduction in the suicide rates by 6.7% (95% CI: 24.7% to -12.5%). The odds for death by suicide for the total Irish population during the First World War period were calculated as 0.872 (95% CI: 0.754 to 0.997). This indicates to a reduction in the suicide rates by 12.8% (95% CI: 24.6% to 0.3%).
 Conclusion: Evidence from this study support a significant drop in terms of the intensity of suicidal behaviour in the Irish population during World War I more so than during the Irish Civil War.
 Conflict of interest: none

The Validity of Google Trends Search Volumes for Behavioral Forecasting of National Suicide Rates in Ireland.

Annual suicide figures are critical in identifying trends and guiding research, yet challenges arising from significant lags in reporting can delay and complicate real-time interventions. In this paper, we utilized Google Trends search volumes for behavioral forecasting of national suicide rates in Ireland between 2004 and 2015. Official suicide rates are recorded by the Central Statistics Office in Ireland. While similar investigations using Google trends data have been carried out in other jurisdictions (e.g., United Kingdom, United Stated of America), such research had not yet been completed in Ireland. We compiled a collection of suicide- and depression-related search terms suggested by Google Trends and manually sourced from the literature. Monthly search rate terms at different lags were compared with suicide occurrences to determine the degree of correlation. Following two approaches based on vector autoregression and neural network autoregression, we achieved mean absolute error values between 4.14 and 9.61 when incorporating search query data, with the highest performance for the neural network approach. The application of this process to United Kingdom suicide and search query data showed similar results, supporting the benefit of Google Trends, neural network approach, and the applied search terms to forecast suicide risk increase. Overall, the combination of societal data and online behavior provide a good indication of societal risks; building on past research, our improvements led to robust models integrating search query and unemployment data for suicide risk forecasting in Ireland.

Effect of the First World War on suicide rates in Ireland: an investigation of the 1864-1921 suicide trends.

SummarySince the proposition of the social integration theory by Émile Durkheim, macro-sociological changes have been speculated to affect suicide rates. This study investigates the effect of the First World War on Irish suicide rates. We applied an interrupted time series design of 1864–1921 annual Irish suicide rates. The 1864–1913 suicide rates exhibited a slow-rising trend with a sharp decline from the year 1914 onwards. The odds for death by suicide for males during the 1914–1918 period was 0.811 (95% CI 0.768–0.963). Irish rates of suicide were significantly reduced during the First World War, most notably for males.Declaration of interestNone.Copyright and usage© 2015 The Royal College of Psychiatrists. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

Demographic trends in suicide in the UK and Ireland 1980–2010

Ireland has the 17th highest suicide rate in the EU and the 4th highest among 15-24-year-old males (WHO 2012). Suicide is the leading cause of death in this age group; death by hanging accounted for 69 % of suicides in 2010. This study examines youth suicide rates from 1980 to 2010 in Ireland and compares them to the rates in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales. Irish data were obtained from the Central Statistics Office and their annual reports on Vital Statistics. Northern Irish data were obtained from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency website; Scottish data were from the General Register Office for Scotland and English/Welsh data from the Office for National Statistics website. There has been a threefold increase in young male suicide in Ireland over the past three decades (8.9-29.7 per 100,000). In contrast, there has been approximately a threefold reduction in deaths by road traffic accidents in young men in the same period (42.7-16.2 per 100,000). Suicide rates in young men are similar in Scotland and Northern Ireland for the same period but are 50 % lower in England and Wales. Despite the rates of hanging as a method of suicide increasing in all jurisdictions, the overall rate in England and Wales has continued to decline. The suicide rate in Ireland remains very high and strategies to address this are urgently required. Our study indicates that national suicide prevention strategies can be effective.

Suicide in Ireland: a cross-national view.

Recent epidemiological trends in Irish suicide rates were examined and found to be consistent with worldwide trends. However, the time-series Irish suicide rate was not consistent with predictions made from Durkheim's classic theory of suicide. Finally, current theories of the etiology of suicide were used to derive a linear regression equation to predict the Irish suicide rate which turned out to be quite inaccurate. The task addressed in this article is a review of the epidemiology of suicide in Ireland and, in doing so, the suicide rate in Ireland will be compared with the suicide rates of other nations of the world. Table 1 reports the suicide rate in Ireland from 1901 to 1949, Table 2 for the period 1950-2001, overall and for men and women (and parallel data for Northern Ireland are shown in Table 3). These data were compiled from Lester and Yang and from World Health Organisation publications and online (www.who.int). It should be noted that suicide was decriminalised in Ireland in 1993.

A Study of the Irish System of Recording Suicide Deaths

A Study of the Irish System of Recording Suicide Deaths

Suicide and Changing Values and Beliefs in Ireland

This paper addresses some of the generalized theories explaining rising suicide rates in Ireland. The conclusion here is that linking suicide patterns to changing beliefs and values is problematic. Church attendance as well as adherence to traditional values remain high in this country compared to European levels, and variations in beliefs and values, especially rural/urban differences, do not fit with general explanations. Moreover, attitudes to value areas fluctuate in that justification for suicide--which showed an upward trend in the 1980s--was reversed in the 1990s, and this may have resulted from increased public focus and debate. Generalized explanations are unlikely to decipher complex phenomena such as suicidal behavior. Religious belief, if protective in relation to suicide, is unlikely to act alone. Social transformations have a differential impact depending on one's socio-economic positioning, which translates ideas of a general male vulnerability to suicide into focused areas of male distress.

Suicide rates in Irish counties

AbstractObjectives: This study was designed to explore the social correlates of the country suicide rate in Ireland.Method: Suicide rates for Irish counties were calculated for the period 1978-1984, a seven year period centred around the 1981 Census.Results: The county suicide rates were positively associated with death rates and the percentage of elderly population and negatively with change in population, the birth rate and the percentage of the population under the age of 15.Conclusions: There is good evidence to suggest that the official suicide rate in Ireland has been underestimated in the past. This underestimation may not have been uniform across all of the counties.

Suicide in the United Kingdom and Ireland

The purpose of this study was to compare epidemiological trends in suicide for the three regions of the United Kingdom (England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland) and for Ireland from 1960 to 1990. The data on suicide rates were obtained from the World Health Organization statistical base, supplemented by data from the statistical offices of the four regions. While the suicide rates in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland increased during the period under study, English/Welsh suicide rates first declined and then held steady. In Ireland, both male and female suicide rates increased, whereas in the other regions only male suicide rates rose. According to age, in England and Wales, suicide rates rose for male teenagers and young males, while for the other regions male suicide rates increased in general for all age groups. Social indicators (unemployment, marriage and birth rates) were quite successful in predicting male suicide rates in all four regions and in predicting female suicide rates in England and Wales and in Ireland. The results emphasize the importance of studying several regions in epidemiological studies in order to identify which trends are general and which are unique to one nation. In the present study, the epidemiological trends for suicide in England and Wales were quite different from those in the other three regions. In particular, the steady overall suicide rate in England and Wales and the rising suicide rate for young males alone differ from the trends observed in the other regions and raise importante questions about the causes of the social suicide rate in these four regions.

Les statistiques du suicide en République d'Irlande sur la période 1978-1990

The official suicide rate in Ireland increased markedly between 1978 and 1990. This increase was attributed to the rise of male suicides in all age-groups as well as to improvements in recording practices. The major cause of death for men was found to be hanging whereas it was found to be poisoning for women. These findings are important since the manner by which a person dies influences the verdict returned by the coroner and therefore, the suicide figures. Possible reasons for this increasing trend in suicide frequency among males include a decline in the cohesiveness of family life as well as a rise in alcohol related problems.

The influence of antidepressants in overdose on the increased suicide rate in Ireland between 1971 and 1988.

There has been almost a threefold increase in the incidence of suicide in Ireland during the past 20 years. When each case occurring between 1971 and 1988 was reviewed, the major causes of death were found to be drowning and hanging. Deliberate overdoses with tricyclic antidepressants accounted for less than 4% of all suicides, over the 17 years studied, and during this time, overdose with tricyclics has made a proportionately smaller contribution to the total number of suicides. Greater attention should be paid to identifying and treating the majority of suicidal patients who are at risk by other methods.

Do statistics lie? Suicide in Kildare – and in Ireland

This study, reporting a ten-year investigation of suicide in Kildare, found that the suicide rate based on clinical assessment of coroner's records was very close to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) figure for Kildare and for Ireland as a whole for the same period. Dublin data for 1977-1981 confirmed these findings. Since in the 1960s similar clinical assessment concluded that CSO rates underestimated suicide by a factor of two or over, we believe that changes in CSO coding procedures whereby more deaths are now coded to suicide than was the case in the past have resulted in current CSO data reflecting accurately the rate of clinical suicide. There has been more than a three-fold increase in CSO suicide rates in Ireland between 1968 and 1987. Even allowing for improved CSO practices there still remains a considerable excess of suicide deaths which indicates a doubling of 'real' suicide in Ireland over these twenty years.

Suicide in Cork and Ireland

The official suicide rate in Ireland increased markedly between 1970 and 1985. This is genuine increase in suicide and not an apparent one due to previous deficiencies in recording practices. Possible reasons for this change include an increase in 'anomie' shown by a rise in the rates of crime, illegitimacy and admissions to hospital for alcoholism, a decline in social cohesion revealed by a fall in the marriage rate and a rise in the number of separated couples, and an increase in unemployment.

Suicide rates in Ireland.

From a total of 410 post-mortem examinations on Galway residents deceased in 1978 the examining pathologist and 3 psychiatrists were in close agreement in 22 cases that death was by suicide. These figures were extrapolated, and a Republic of Ireland minimum true rate of suicide was computed which was 3 times greater than the official reported rate. Irish suicide data were found not to be dependent on coroners' reports as is commonly believed. It is concluded that under-reporting reduces Irish suicide rates to a far greater extent than has been supposed. The substitution of clinical for legalistic methods of recording suicide data is recommended.

Seasonal Variation in Irish Suicidal Deaths

Lester (2) and Sanborn and S a n b r n ( 5 ) have shown that the suicidal deaths' rates for two different geographical locations in the United States display some evidence of Spring and Fall peaks. This study was an attempt to discover whether there are comparable patterns in the Republic of Ireland. That the statistical returns underestimate the 'true' suicide rate in Ireland seems fairly well established (3, 4) . However, Bruga and Walsh (1) concluded that, although the official statistics do underestimate the 'true' suicide rate, they are likely to reflect valid variations in rate. Computerized records containing sufficiently detailed data for analysis were recorded for the first time from 1971 and are presently available only up until 1975. There were 542 deaths by suicide during this period, and the monthly rates for males and females over the 5 yr. were analyzed by means of a 2 X 12 factorial analysis of variance (Model 11) using sex and month as factors (6, p. 445). The main effect of sex was, as expected, significant ( K . M = 86.74, p .25); iMs and SDs = 6.8, 1.64; 6.6, 4.16; 8.8, 4.21; 10.0, 3.39; 8.8, 2.95; 8.6, 2.97; 9.0, 5.87; 12.0, 2.92; 10.2, 0.84; 7.6, 5.46; 8.2, 1.79; 11.8, 5.07 for January to December, respectively. The interaction of sex and month was non-significant, i.e., there was no significant sex difference in the distribution of suicidal deaths throughout the year. While it is possible that a larger sample, when it becomes available, may indicate seasonal variation in the suicide rate, the present data display no such pattern. This remains the case even when the analysis is performed in terms of seasons, i.e., groups of 3 mo., and when the progressive increase in suicide rate over the 5-yr. period is taken into account.

Suicide in Dublin: I. The under-reporting of suicide and the consequences for national statistics.

This study of suicide in Dublin during 1964-1968 from coroners' records was undertaken to estimate the discrepancy between coroners' verdicts, the national suicide statistics compiled from them and the clinical assessment of probability of suicide by psychiatrists examining the same records. The large difference in numbers of suicides deriving from the two approaches has considerable implications for national suicide statistics, and these have been briefly considered. From the findings presented we believe that we are justified in concluding that: (a) there are real differences in national suicide rates, at least between Ireland, England and Wales, and Scotland, and (b) the Irish suicide rate is low, though not as low as official statistics suggest, and (c) the discrepancy between official and "true" suicide rates in Ireland is greater than in England and Wales and in Scotland.