Unemployment and suicide

• Published in: Journal of epidemiology and community health (1979) Vol. 57; no. 8; pp. 560 - 561
• Main Author: Agerbo, E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BMJ Publishing Group Ltd 01.08.2003; BMJ Publishing Group; BMJ Publishing Group LTD; BMJ Group
• Subjects: Case control studies; Causality; Commentaries; Humans; Labor market; Mental disorders; Mental Health; Mental illness; Predisposing factors; Risk Factors; Sensitivity analysis; socioeconomic status; Studies; Suicide; Suicide - psychology; Suicides & suicide attempts; Unemployment
• ISSN: 0143-005X; 1470-2738
• DOI: 10.1136/jech.57.8.560

Professor Judea Pearl's new book is a brilliant introduction to these and other techniques used to strengthen causal reasoning. 3 Blakely and colleagues say that the suicide-unemployment association found in their paper is likely to be causal. 4 They argue that the link is not mediated by financial stress (which by the way carried surprisingly little information in the first place), as the incidence related to unemployment is comparatively unchanged in the adjusted regression, and because the odds of linking suicide were almost the same between the most socioeconomically deprived 50% of small areas compared with the least deprived 50%.