TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pirkis, Jane
A1  - Gunnell, David
A1  - Shin, Sangsoo
A1  - Del Pozo-Banos, Marcos
A1  - Arya, Vikas
A1  - Analuisa Aguilar, Pablo
A1  - Appleby, Louis
A1  - Yasir Arafat, S. M.
A1  - Arensman, Ella
A1  - Ayuso-Mateos, Jose Luis
A1  - Pal Singh Balhara, Yatan
A1  - Bantjes, Jason
A1  - Baran, Anna
A1  - Behera, Chittaranjan
A1  - Bertolote, Jose
A1  - Borges, Guilherme
A1  - Bray, Michael
A1  - Brečić, Petrana
A1  - Caine, Eric
A1  - Calati, Raffaella
A1  - Carli, Vladimir
A1  - Castelpietra, Giulio
A1  - Fong Chan, Lai
A1  - Chang, Shu-Sen
A1  - Colchester, David
A1  - Coss-Guzmán, Maria
A1  - Crompton, David
A1  - Ćurković, Marko
A1  - Dandona, Rakhi
A1  - De Jaegere, Eva
A1  - De Leo, Diego
A1  - Deisenhammer, Eberhard A.
A1  - Dwyer, Jeremy
A1  - Erlangsen, Annette
A1  - Faust, Jeremy S.
A1  - Fornaro, Michele
A1  - Fortune, Sarah
A1  - Garrett, Andrew
A1  - Gentile, Guendalina
A1  - Gerstner, Rebekka
A1  - Gilissen, Renske
A1  - Gould, Madelyn
A1  - Kumar Gupta, Sudhir
A1  - Hawton, Keith
A1  - Holz, Franziska
A1  - Kamenshchikov, Iurii
A1  - Kapur, Navneet
A1  - Kasal, Alexandr
A1  - Khan, Murad
A1  - Kirtley, Olivia J.
A1  - Knipe, Duleeka
A1  - Kõlves, Kairi
A1  - Kölzer, Sarah C.
A1  - Krivda, Hryhorii
A1  - Leske, Stuart
A1  - Madeddu, Fabio
A1  - Marshall, Andrew
A1  - Memon, Anjum
A1  - Mittendorfer-Rutz, Ellenor
A1  - Nestadt, Paul
A1  - Neznanov, Nikolay
A1  - Niederkrotenthaler, Thomas
A1  - Nielsen, Emma
A1  - Nordentoft, Merete
A1  - Oberlerchner, Herwig
A1  - O’Connor, Rory C.
A1  - Papsdorf, Rainer
A1  - Partonen, Timo
A1  - Phillips, Michael R.
A1  - Platt, Steve
A1  - Portzky, Gwendolyn
A1  - Psota, Georg
A1  - Qin, Ping
A1  - Radeloff, Daniel
A1  - Reif, Andreas
A1  - Reif-Leonhard, Christine
A1  - Rezaeian, Mohsen
A1  - Román-Vázquez, Nayda
A1  - Roskar, Saska
A1  - Rozanov, Vsevolod
A1  - Sara, Grant
A1  - Scavacini, Karen
A1  - Schneider, Barbara
A1  - Semenova, Natalia
A1  - Sinyor, Mark
A1  - Tambuzzi, Stefano
A1  - Townsend, Ellen
A1  - Ueda, Michiko
A1  - Wasserman, Danuta
A1  - Webb, Roger T.
A1  - Winkler, Petr
A1  - Yip, Paul S. F.
A1  - Zalsman, Gil
A1  - Zoja, Riccardo
A1  - John, Ann
A1  - Spittal, Matthew J.
T1  - Suicide numbers during the first 9-15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with pre-existing trends: an interrupted time series analysis in 33 countries
T2  - eClinicalMedicine
N2  - Background: Predicted increases in suicide were not generally observed in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the picture may be changing and patterns might vary across demographic groups. We aimed to provide a timely, granular picture of the pandemic's impact on suicides globally.
Methods: We identified suicide data from official public-sector sources for countries/areas-within-countries, searching websites and academic literature and contacting data custodians and authors as necessary. We sent our first data request on 22nd June 2021 and stopped collecting data on 31st October 2021. We used interrupted time series (ITS) analyses to model the association between the pandemic's emergence and total suicides and suicides by sex-, age- and sex-by-age in each country/area-within-country. We compared the observed and expected numbers of suicides in the pandemic's first nine and first 10-15 months and used meta-regression to explore sources of variation.
Findings: We sourced data from 33 countries (24 high-income, six upper-middle-income, three lower-middle-income; 25 with whole-country data, 12 with data for area(s)-within-the-country, four with both). There was no evidence of greater-than-expected numbers of suicides in the majority of countries/areas-within-countries in any analysis; more commonly, there was evidence of lower-than-expected numbers. Certain sex, age and sex-by-age groups stood out as potentially concerning, but these were not consistent across countries/areas-within-countries. In the meta-regression, different patterns were not explained by countries’ COVID-19 mortality rate, stringency of public health response, economic support level, or presence of a national suicide prevention strategy. Nor were they explained by countries’ income level, although the meta-regression only included data from high-income and upper-middle-income countries, and there were suggestions from the ITS analyses that lower-middle-income countries fared less well.
Interpretation: Although there are some countries/areas-within-countries where overall suicide numbers and numbers for certain sex- and age-based groups are greater-than-expected, these countries/areas-within-countries are in the minority. Any upward movement in suicide numbers in any place or group is concerning, and we need to remain alert to and respond to changes as the pandemic and its mental health and economic consequences continue.
KW  - Suicide
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - Pandemic
KW  - Monitoring
Y1  - 2022
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/70104
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-701042
SN  - 2589-5370
VL  - 51
IS  - 101573
ER  -