NATIONAL TRENDS IN SUICIDE BY AGE, GENDER, GEOGRAPHY, SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND MIGRANT STATUS AND MENTAL HEALTH

Funded Activity Summary

Suicide in Australia has become an increasingly important public health problem, chiefly because of increasing rates in some population sub-groups, and to a lesser extent because declines in other external causes of death have increased the prominence of suicide. Since the 1970s suicide rates have increased in young males and have eclipsed motor vehicle accidents as the dominant cause of death in this group. Suicide in the young produces a significant impact on years of life lost from premature mortality. Suicide rates have been shown to vary by socio-economic status, ethnicity, area of residence, age and sex. In NSW for example, suicide rates in young males have been found to have increased by 50% in urban areas, and by 5-6 times in isolated rural areas. Another study has shown suicide rates to vary by country-of-birth which in turn has an effect on its relationship with socio-economic status. However, not all studies have replicated findings in NSW. In Queensland, for example, it has been shown that male youth suicide rates in rural areas have not substantially exceeded those in urban areas. There have been very few studies at the national level of variations in suicide in Australia. Most studies of Australian suicide to date have been confined to state-level analyses or to very limited nation-level analyses. An additional spur to a whole-nation approach to suicide has been the nation-wide Australian Bureau of Statistics Mental Health and Wellbeing Profile of Adults and a similar mental health survey of youth. Thus for the first time it will be possible to relate population prevalence of self-reported mental illness to suicide rates. In short, the current proposal addresses the two major gaps in Australia in population suicide research: examining suicide at the national level with regard to geographic location, immigrant and socio-economic status; and correlating surveyed prevalence of mental illness with suicide rates.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2000

End Date: 01-01-2002

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $148,690.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Optometry

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

Socio-economic variation and suicide | mental health | migrant status | regional variation in suicide | rurality | socio-economic status | suicide | surveyed mental health and suicide | temporal variation in suicide

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