Financial crisis led to increased suicide rates in Europe

Posted by elena On Sunday, July 10th 2011 in Economy

The financial crisis caused suicide rates to rise in the European Union, according to a team of researchers from the US and UK. More Europeans have killed themselves in 2008 and 2009, compared to 2007, seemingly because of the tough economic times. The countries most affected by the recession, such as Greece and Ireland, had the biggest rise in suicides (17% and 13% respectively). Among the 10 countries featured in the study, only one, Austria, had a lower rate of suicides in 2009, compared to 2007. The other nine saw a rise of at least 5%.

The team of British and American researchers made use of data from the World Health Organization to examine suicide rates in 10 European countries, between 2007 and 2009. They looked at the amount of suicides among people of working age and found a link between the financial recession, which brought about large rates of unemployment, and the number of suicides. In nine of the countries involved in the research, suicide rates went up from 2007 to 2009. The analysis was published in the journal "The Lancet".

The 10 countries are Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Romania and the United Kingdom. Austria is the only nation among them where suicide rates did not go up, but instead decreased by 5%; researchers say that this is due to the country being less affected by the recession.

Suicide rates went up the most in Greece and Ireland, the two countries most affected by the crisis. Greece saw a rise of 17%, while Ireland had 13% more suicides in 2009, compared to 2007. Finland had the lowest rise among the nine countries. In the United Kingdom, suicide rates went up by 10%, from 6.14 in 100,000 people in 2007, to 6.75 in 2008 and a similar number in 2009.

The increase came after a period when suicide rates were falling. But in 2007, they started to rise again. Dr David Stuckler of Cambridge University, one of the authors of the analysis, said that it was a "complete turnaround". Between 2007 and 2009, there was also a 35% increase in unemployment rates. The researchers also found that death rates from road accidents had gone down, which could be explained by a decrease in vehicle use due to unemployment. This balanced the number of total deaths.