Unemployment and Suicidal Behavior in a New Zealand Birth Cohort
A Fixed Effects Regression Analysis
Abstract
Abstract. This study examined the association between exposure to unemployment and suicidal behaviors (suicidal ideation and attempted suicide) in a birth cohort of New Zealand young adults using fixed-effects logistic and Poisson regression models. Data were gathered on unemployment and suicidal behaviors at annual periods from ages 16-25 years. At all ages increasing exposure to unemployment was associated with increased risks of suicidal ideation (p < .0001) and number of suicide attempts (p < .0001). Following adjustment for fixed effects and time-dynamic covariates, associations between unemployment and suicidal ideation reduced to marginal significance (p < .10), while the association between unemployment and suicide attempts was not statistically significant (p > .10). After adjustment, those experiencing 6 or more months of unemployment in a given year had odds of suicidal ideation that were 1.43 (95% CI: .96 to 2.16) times higher, and rates of suicide attempts that were 1.72 (95% CI: .89 to 3.32) times higher, than those who were not exposed to unemployment. Although unemployment was associated with moderate increases in risks of suicidal behaviors, much of this association was explained by confounding factors.
References
(2005). Effect of psychiatric illness and labour market status on suicide: A healthy worker effect?. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 59, 598–602
(1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association
(1998). Unemployment and serious suicide attempts. Psychological Medicine, 28(1), 209–218
(2003). Unemployment and suicide. Evidence for a causal association?. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 57, 594–600
(2003). The interplay among risk factors for suicidal ideation and suicide: The role of depression, poor health, and loved ones' messages of support and criticism. American Journal of Community Psychology, 32(1-2), 131–141
(1998). Regression analysis of count data. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(2003). Attempted suicide among young people: Risk factors in a prospective register-based study of Danish children born in 1966. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 108, 350–358
(2005). Suicide prevention in New Zealand: A contemporary perspective. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Health
(1989). Improving self-reported measures of delinquency. In M.W. Klein (Ed.), Cross-national research in self-reported crime and delinquency (pp. 155-186). Boston, MA: Kluwer
(2004). The prediction of thoughts of death or self-harm in a population-based sample of female twins. Psychological Medicine, 34, 301–312
(2001). Unemployment and psychosocial adjustment in young adults: Causation or selection?. Social Science and Medicine, 53, 305–320
(1999). Risk factors for suicide independent of DSM-III-R Axis I disorder: Case-control psychological autopsy study in Northern Ireland. British Journal of Psychiatry, 175, 175–179
(2002). A twin study of genetic and environmental influences on suicidability in men. Psychological Medicine, 32, 11–24
(1988). Random regression models: A comprehensive approach to the analysis of longitudinal psychiatric data. Psychopharmacological Bulletin, 24, 438–443
(1990). Econometric analysis. New York: Macmillan
(1988). Female unemployment and attempted suicide. British Journal of Psychiatry, 152, 632–637
(1991). The role of unemployment in parasuicide. Psychological Medicine, 21, 169–176
(2001). Unemployment and suicide: A cohort analysis of social factors predicting suicide in the US National Longitudinal Mortality Study. Psychological Medicine, 31, 127–138
(1984). Feeling bad: Exploring sources of distress among preadolescent children. American Journal of Public Health, 74, 117–122
(1998). Suicide, deprivation, and unemployment: Record linkage study. British Medical Journal, 317, 1283–1286
(2001). Transitions of employment status among suicide attempters during a severe economic recession. Social Science and Medicine, 52, 1741–1750
(2003). Suicide risk in relation to socioeconomic, demographic, psychiatric, and familial factors: A national register-based study of all suicides in Denmark, 1981-1997. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 765–772
(1996). Attempted suicide in Europe: Rates, trends, and sociodemographic characteristics of suicide attempters during the period 1989-1992. Results of the WHO/EURO Multicentre Study on Parasuicide. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 93, 327–338
(2003). Stata Statistical Software: Release 8.0. Texas: Stata Corporation, College Station
(2004). Unemployment and early cause-specific mortality: A study based on the Swedish Twin Registry. American Journal of Public Health, 94, 2155–2161
(2002). Deviant partner involvement and offending risk in early adulthood. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 177–190
(1993). Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI). Geneva, Switzerland: Author
(1990). Time-series analyses of the American suicide rate. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 25, 274–275
(1992). Suicide and unemployment: Predicting the smoothed trend and yearly fluctuations. Journal of Socio-Economics, 21(1), 39–41