Access to farming pesticides and risk for suicide in Chinese rural young people

Abstract

Suicide is a leading cause of death in individuals 15-34 years of age in China. Highly lethal pesticides are a common method used for suicide in Chinese rural areas. This case-control study aimed to test hypotheses concerning the suicide risks associated with pesticide access. Subjects included 370 rural completed suicides aged 15 to 34 years and 370 living controls matched on age, gender, and residence (rural/urban location). Data were collected by a psychological autopsy design with proxy respondents. Pesticide access was a significant risk factor for suicide even after controlling for other known risk factors in social and psychiatric domains, such as education level, living situation, marital status, family annual income, and mental disorder. Increased risk was accounted for by access to insecticide rather than other types of pesticides. Suicide intervention in China should focus on restricting access to pesticides, especially highly toxic insecticide, improving the resuscitation skills of rural primary-care health providers, promoting psychological and social support networks in rural areas, and educating the general public about the suicide risk of having pesticides stored at the households.

Suicide and poverty in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review

“…We assessed 29 (78%) studies to be of high [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43] or acceptable [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] quality (Table 3). Eight studies [59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66] were of low quality due to problems with risk of bias: performance, attrition and detection bias (interrupted-time series); selection bias, unclear case definitions, detection bias, lack of adjustment for confounding factors (case-control studies); detection bias, lack of adjustment for confounding factors (cross sectional and ecological studies).…”

“…Five studies 36,38,56,61,63 focused on completed suicide. Two 36,63 reported positive and two 38,56 null associations when using bivariate analysis.…”

“…Five studies 36,38,56,61,63 focused on completed suicide. Two 36,63 reported positive and two 38,56 null associations when using bivariate analysis. However, where multivariate analysis was performed in two Indian studies, only null associations were found for value of livestock and value of agricultural produce amongst farmers 61 and for monthly household income.…”

Mortalidad debida a intoxicación por plaguicidas en Colombia entre 1998 y 2011

“…Las tasas de mortalidad por intoxicaciones con plaguicidas en el país fueron más altas en el área rural, con un mayor peso de la mortalidad por intoxicaciones autoinfligidas intencionalmente, lo que también se ha evidenciado en algunos países asiáticos como Corea del Sur (29), Sri Lanka (38), Taiwán (39) y China (40), en hechos probablemente relacionados con las actividades laborales de tipo agrícola, con el fácil acceso a los plaguicidas y el escaso control que sobre ellos se ejerce, a lo que se añaden aspectos de la vida rural como son el bajo nivel socioeconómico, las barreras para acceder y utilizar los servicios de salud, la cultura rural, y las actitudes de la comunidad hacia la enfermedad y la búsqueda de ayuda (41). Diversos estudios han demostrado la relación entre los problemas de salud mental y las tasas de suicidio en áreas rurales donde es difícil tener acceso a los servicios de salud.…”

Stress in Farm Entrepreneurs

“…In a literature review, Monk (2000) reported increasing stress and suicides among farming communities, and Patil and Somasundaram (2010) have also described suicides among farmers as a global challenge. A review of the literature reveals that the situation differs between countries, but at least in Australia (Yip et al, 2000), the UK (Meltzer et al, 2008), China (Kong and Zhang, 2010), India (Patil and Somasundaram (2010) and the USA (Gunderson et al, 1993), farm entrepreneurs have an elevated risk of suicide. In Australia, the suicide rate among rural men was observed to be higher than among urban men, but urban women had a greater suicide rate than rural women (Yip et al, 2000).…”