Now or later? Understanding the etiologic period of suicide

Vandoros, Sotiris and Kavetsos, Georgios (2015) Now or later? Understanding the etiologic period of suicide. Preventive Medicine Reports, 2. pp. 809-811. ISSN 2211-3355

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Abstract

Objective Previous research shows that the announcement of austerity measures leads to an immediate and short-lived increase in behaviour that demonstrates anxiety, stress, frustration and other mental effects. This paper uses evidence from the same natural experiment to study whether, for a given decision to commit suicide (as documented by the overall increase over the study period), suicides follow immediately after the announcement of austerity measures in Greece; or whether this is an effect that matures in peoples’ minds before being transformed into action. Methods We use evidence from a natural experiment and follow an OLS econometric approach. Results Our findings show that, despite an overall sharp increase in suicides over the study period, the increase does not follow immediately in the first few days after each such negative event. Conclusion This suggests that suicides are not spontaneous. They are rather decisions that take time to mature. This time lag implies that suicides arguably attributed to recessions are, in principle, preventable and underlines the importance of mental health services

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22113...
Additional Information:	© 2015 The Authors © CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Divisions:	Social Policy
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Date Deposited:	02 Oct 2015 11:20
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2024 17:18
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/63869

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