IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0148288.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Association between the Density of Physicians and Suicide Rates in Japan: Nationwide Ecological Study Using a Spatial Bayesian Model

Author

Listed:
  • Hideaki Kawaguchi
  • Soichi Koike

Abstract

Background: Regional disparity in suicide rates is a serious problem worldwide. One possible cause is unequal distribution of the health workforce, especially psychiatrists. Research about the association between regional physician numbers and suicide rates is therefore important but studies are rare. The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between physician numbers and suicide rates in Japan, by municipality. Methods: The study included all the municipalities in Japan (n = 1,896). We estimated smoothed standardized mortality ratios of suicide rates for each municipality and evaluated the association between health workforce and suicide rates using a hierarchical Bayesian model accounting for spatially correlated random effects, a conditional autoregressive model. We assumed a Poisson distribution for the observed number of suicides and set the expected number of suicides as the offset variable. The explanatory variables were numbers of physicians, a binary variable for the presence of psychiatrists, and social covariates. Results: After adjustment for socioeconomic factors, suicide rates in municipalities that had at least one psychiatrist were lower than those in the other municipalities. There was, however, a positive and statistically significant association between the number of physicians and suicide rates. Conclusions: Suicide rates in municipalities that had at least one psychiatrist were lower than those in other municipalities, but the number of physicians was positively and significantly related with suicide rates. To improve the regional disparity in suicide rates, the government should encourage psychiatrists to participate in community-based suicide prevention programs and to settle in municipalities that currently have no psychiatrists. The government and other stakeholders should also construct better networks between psychiatrists and non-psychiatrists to support sharing of information for suicide prevention.

Suggested Citation

  • Hideaki Kawaguchi & Soichi Koike, 2016. "Association between the Density of Physicians and Suicide Rates in Japan: Nationwide Ecological Study Using a Spatial Bayesian Model," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(2), pages 1-9, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0148288
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148288
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0148288
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0148288&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0148288?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yip, Paul S.F. & Yousuf, Saman & Chan, Chee Hon & Yung, Tiffany & Wu, Kevin C.-C., 2015. "The roles of culture and gender in the relationship between divorce and suicide risk: A meta-analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 87-94.
    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. Takashi Shiroyama & Kouji Fukuyama & Motohiro Okada, 2021. "Effects of Financial Expenditure of Prefectures/Municipalities on Regional Suicide Mortality in Japan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-16, August.
    2. Tomosuke Nakano & Toshiki Hasegawa & Motohiro Okada, 2021. "Analysing the Impacts of Financial Support for Regional Suicide Prevention Programmes on Suicide Mortality Caused by Major Suicide Motives in Japan Using Statistical Government Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(7), pages 1-20, March.
    3. Ryo Kato & Motohiro Okada, 2019. "Can Financial Support Reduce Suicide Mortality Rates?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(23), pages 1-11, November.
    4. Toshiki Hasegawa & Kouji Fukuyama & Motohiro Okada, 2021. "Relationships between Expenditure of Regional Governments and Suicide Mortalities Caused by Six Major Motives in Japan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-18, December.
    5. Misaki Nakamoto & Takatoshi Nakagawa & Masahiko Murata & Motohiro Okada, 2021. "Impacts of Dual-Income Household Rate on Suicide Mortalities in Japan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(11), pages 1-16, May.

    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. Mitch Kunce, 2022. "The Tenuous Ecological Divorce and Unemployment Link with Suicide: A U.S. Panel Analysis 1968-2020," Journal of Statistical and Econometric Methods, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 11(3), pages 1-2.
    2. Mrozynski, Hannah & Kuhn, Eva, 2022. "Reasoning for autonomous suicide? A qualitative approach to pre-suicidal decision-making," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).
    3. Yeung, Cheuk Yui & Men, Yu Vera & Caine, Eric D. & Yip, Paul Siu Fai, 2022. "The differential impacts of social deprivation and social fragmentation on suicides: A lesson from Hong Kong," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    4. Kyung-Sook, Woo & SangSoo, Shin & Sangjin, Shin & Young-Jeon, Shin, 2018. "Marital status integration and suicide: A meta-analysis and meta-regression," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 116-126.
    5. Vandoros, Sotiris & Avendano, Mauricio & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2019. "The association between economic uncertainty and suicide in the short-run," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 403-410.
    6. Francesco Moscone & Elisa Tosetti & Giorgio Vittadini, 2023. "The Role of Economic News in Predicting Suicides," Working Papers 2023: 32, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    7. Chen, Ying-Yeh & Chen, Mengni & Lui, Carrie S.M. & Yip, Paul S.F., 2017. "Female labour force participation and suicide rates in the world," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 61-67.
    8. Daniel Hideki Bando & Ligia Vizeu Barrozo & Fernando Madalena Volpe, 2020. "Geographical clusters and social risk factors for suicide in the city of São Paulo, 2006–2015: An ecologic study," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 66(5), pages 460-468, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:plo:pone00:0148288. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.