1 in 5 suicides is associated with unemployment

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/uoz-oif021015.php

Public Release: 10-Feb-2015
University of Zurich

Unemployment can drive people to suicide. Numerous studies have demonstrated that there is a relationship between unemployment and poor health and that (the threat of) losing a job and prolonged unemployment can constitute a serious situation for those affected as well as their relatives. The debate on this fateful association was reignited by the 2008 economic crisis and the subsequent austerity policies in many countries. While many studies have merely focused on crisis years and examined single countries or one world region, now, for the first time, Carlos Nordt, Ingeborg Warnke, Erich Seifritz and Wolfram Kawohl from the University of Zurich's Psychiatric Hospital have been able to draw a larger picture for four regions in the world from 2000 to 2011. "Every year, around one in five suicides is associated with unemployment," says first author Carlos Nordt. The study has just been published in the journal The Lancet Psychiatry.

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Moreover, a changing unemployment rate affected both sex as well as different age groups equally.

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