IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v65y2007i3p442-453.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Further increases in rural suicide in young Australian adults: Secular trends, 1979-2003

Author

Listed:
  • Page, Andrew
  • Morrell, Stephen
  • Taylor, Richard
  • Dudley, Michael
  • Carter, Greg

Abstract

This study investigates changes in Australian urban-rural suicide differentials over time in the context of overall declines in (male) suicide in the late 1990s, and determines the extent to which differences in socio-economic status (SES) account for observed urban-rural trends. Suicide data were stratified for the period 1979-2003 by metropolitan, rural and remote areas and examined across five quinquennia, centred on each Australian census from 1981 to 2001. Suicide rates (per 100,000) were adjusted for confounding by sex, age, country-of-birth and the mediating effects of area SES, using Poisson regression models. Male suicide rates in metropolitan, rural and remote areas diverged significantly over time, especially in young males (15-24 years). Young male suicide rates increased significantly in metropolitan, rural and remote areas over 1979-1998, and in the most recent period (1999-2003) increased further in remote areas from 38.8 (per 100,000) to 47.9 (23% increase). In contrast suicide rates in rural areas decreased from a peak of 27.5 to 19.8 (28% decrease), and in metropolitan areas from a peak of 22.1 to 16.8 (24% decrease). Similar divergence in the 1999-2003 quinquennium, though of a lesser magnitude, was also evident for males aged 25-34 years. Female suicide rates in the earlier part of the period were significantly lower in rural and remote areas than in metropolitan areas, particularly for those aged 25-34 years, then increased in rural and remote areas to converge with female suicide rates in metropolitan areas. Adjusting for SES in addition to age and country-of-birth reduced urban-rural suicide differentials in both males and females, consistent with SES being an intermediary between rural residence and suicide. Nevertheless, urban-rural differences remained statistically significant. These results show that the largest urban-rural male suicide differentials for the 25-year study period occurred in the most recent period (1999-2003), in the context of decreasing male suicide rates overall.

Suggested Citation

  • Page, Andrew & Morrell, Stephen & Taylor, Richard & Dudley, Michael & Carter, Greg, 2007. "Further increases in rural suicide in young Australian adults: Secular trends, 1979-2003," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 442-453, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:65:y:2007:i:3:p:442-453
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(07)00156-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morrell, Stephen & Taylor, Richard & Slaytor, Emma & Ford, Paul, 1999. "Urban and rural suicide differentials in migrants and the Australian-born, New South Wales, Australia 1985-1994," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 81-91, July.
    2. Taylor, Richard & Morrell, Stephen & Slaytor, Emma & Ford, Paul, 1998. "Suicide in urban New South Wales, Australia 1985-1994: socio-economic and migrant interactions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 47(11), pages 1677-1686, December.
    3. Middleton, Nicos & Gunnell, David & Frankel, Stephen & Whitley, Elise & Dorling, Daniel, 2003. "Urban-rural differences in suicide trends in young adults: England and Wales, 1981-1998," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(7), pages 1183-1194, October.
    4. Levin, Kate A. & Leyland, Alastair H., 2005. "Urban/rural inequalities in suicide in Scotland, 1981-1999," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(12), pages 2877-2890, June.
    5. Burnley, I. H., 1995. "Socioeconomic and spatial differentials in mortality and means of committing suicide in New South Wales, Australia, 1985-1991," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 687-698, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lobo, Gustavo D. & De Souza Almeida, Felipe M. & Danelon, André F. & Rocha, Adauto B. & Almeida, Alexandre N., 2020. "Could the agrochemical poisoning increase suicide attempts in the Brazilian rural areas? An econometric approach using spatial analysis methods," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304593, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Alston, Margaret, 2012. "Rural male suicide in Australia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(4), pages 515-522.
    3. Riva, Mylene & Curtis, Sarah & Gauvin, Lise & Fagg, James, 2009. "Unravelling the extent of inequalities in health across urban and rural areas: Evidence from a national sample in England," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 654-663, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pearce, Jamie & Barnett, Ross & Jones, Irfon, 2007. "Have urban/rural inequalities in suicide in New Zealand grown during the period 1980-2001?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(8), pages 1807-1819, October.
    2. Hempstead, Katherine, 2006. "The geography of self-injury: Spatial patterns in attempted and completed suicide," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(12), pages 3186-3196, June.
    3. Gartner, Andrea & Farewell, Daniel & Roach, Paul & Dunstan, Frank, 2011. "Rural/urban mortality differences in England and Wales and the effect of deprivation adjustment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(10), pages 1685-1694, May.
    4. Taylor, Richard & Page, Andrew & Morrell, Stephen & Harrison, James & Carter, Greg, 2005. "Mental health and socio-economic variations in Australian suicide," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(7), pages 1551-1559, October.
    5. Alberto Forte & Federico Trobia & Flavia Gualtieri & Dorian A. Lamis & Giuseppe Cardamone & Vincenzo Giallonardo & Andrea Fiorillo & Paolo Girardi & Maurizio Pompili, 2018. "Suicide Risk among Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities: A Literature Overview," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-21, July.
    6. Antonio Rodríguez & Sunny Collings & Ping Qin, 2008. "Socio-economic differences in suicide risk vary by sex : A population-based case-control study of 18-65 year olds in Denmark," Development Research Working Paper Series 05/2008, Institute for Advanced Development Studies.
    7. Curtis, Sarah & Cunningham, Niall & Pearce, Jamie & Congdon, Peter & Cherrie, Mark & Atkinson, Sarah, 2021. "Trajectories in mental health and socio-spatial conditions in a time of economic recovery and austerity: A longitudinal study in England 2011–17," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 270(C).
    8. John Helliwell, 2007. "Well-Being and Social Capital: Does Suicide Pose a Puzzle?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 81(3), pages 455-496, May.
    9. Riva, Mylène & Curtis, Sarah & Norman, Paul, 2011. "Residential mobility within England and urban–rural inequalities in mortality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(12), pages 1698-1706.
    10. Harriss, Louise & Hawton, Keith, 2011. "Deliberate self-harm in rural and urban regions: A comparative study of prevalence and patient characteristics," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 274-281, July.
    11. Yong Gan & Heng Jiang & Liqing Li & Yudi Yang & Chao Wang & Jianxin Liu & Tingting Yang & Yanling Zheng & Yi Zhu & Opoku Sampson & Hongbin Xu & Fang Yu & Yali Chen & Chulani Herath & Yanyan Zhong & Qi, 2020. "A national survey of turnover intention among general practitioners in China," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 482-493, March.
    12. Ferdi Botha, 2012. "The Economics Of Suicide In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 80(4), pages 526-552, December.
    13. Cockings, Samantha & Martin, David, 2005. "Zone design for environment and health studies using pre-aggregated data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(12), pages 2729-2742, June.
    14. Levin, Kate A. & Leyland, Alastair H., 2006. "A comparison of health inequalities in urban and rural Scotland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(6), pages 1457-1464, March.
    15. Kanamori, Mariko & Kondo, Naoki & Juarez, Sol & Dunlavy, Andrea & Cederström, Agneta & Rostila, Mikael, 2020. "Rural life and suicide: Does the effect of the community context vary by country of birth? A Swedish registry-based multilevel cohort study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 253(C).
    16. Markowitz, Sara & Cuellar, Alison, 2007. "Antidepressants and youth: Healing or harmful?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(10), pages 2138-2151, May.
    17. Antonios Paraschakis & Ioannis Michopoulos & Christos Christodoulou & Filippos Koutsaftis & Lefteris Lykouras & Athanassios Douzenis, 2014. "Characteristics of immigrant suicide completers in a sample of suicide victims from Greece," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 60(5), pages 462-467, August.
    18. Boyle, Paul J. & Norman, Paul & Popham, Frank, 2009. "Social mobility: Evidence that it can widen health inequalities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(10), pages 1835-1842, May.
    19. Levin, K.A. & Dundas, R. & Miller, M. & McCartney, G., 2014. "Socioeconomic and geographic inequalities in adolescent smoking: A multilevel cross-sectional study of 15 year olds in Scotland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 162-170.
    20. Kim, Myoung-Hee & Jung-Choi, Kyunghee & Jun, Hee-Jin & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2010. "Socioeconomic inequalities in suicidal ideation, parasuicides, and completed suicides in South Korea," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(8), pages 1254-1261, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:65:y:2007:i:3:p:442-453. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.