Evictions and suicide: a follow-up study of almost 22 000 Swedish households in the wake of the global financial crisis

Abstract

BackgroundMillions of families across the world are evicted every year. However, very little is known about the impact that eviction has on their lives. This lack of knowledge is also starting to be noticed within the suicidological literature, and prominent scholars are arguing that there is an urgent need to explore the extent to which suicides may be considered a plausible consequence of being faced with eviction.MethodThe present study's sample consists of all persons served with an application for execution of an eviction order during 2009–2012. This group is compared to a random 10% sample of the general Swedish population, ages 16 years and over. The analysis is based on penalised maximum likelihood logistic regressions.ResultsThose who had lost their legal right to their dwellings and for whom the landlord had applied for the eviction to be executed were approximately four times more likely to commit suicide than those who had not been exposed to this experience (OR=4.42), controlling for several demographic, socioeconomic and mental health conditions prior to the date of the judicial decision.ConclusionsHome evictions have a significant and detrimental impact on individuals’ risk of committing suicide, even when several other well-known suicidogenic risk factors are controlled for. Our results reinforce the importance of ongoing attempts to remove the issue of evictions from its status as a hidden and neglected social problem.

Evictions and short-term all-cause mortality: a 3-year follow-up study of a middle-aged Swedish population

“…Firthlogit is a technique that is suited to dealing with situations in which the event of interest is rare (cf. Rojas and Stenberg 2016), which is the case here in the sense that the proportion of deaths from any cause in the data is lower than 5% (cf. King and Zeng 2001).…”

Systematic review of psychosocial factors associated with evictions

“…Evictions are one of the most common pathways to homelessness (Cusack & Montgomery, ; Desmond & Kimbro, ). In addition to homelessness, studies have shown that evictions are associated with various negative health outcomes, including long‐term stress, medical problems, substance use, depression and suicide among adults and their children (Rojas & Stenberg, ; Van Laere, De Wit, & Klazinga, ; Zivanovic et al., ). Thus, a growing number of studies have begun to conceptualise evictions as an important social and public health problem.…”

Strengthening mental health systems to respond to economic crises

“…One study in Catalonia found that 90% of women and 84% of men in mortgage arrears and threatened with eviction had poor mental health compared with rates of 15% and 10% in the general population (30). A Swedish study linking data on 23,000 court imposed rental evictions found that they were four times more likely to complete suicide than the general population (31).…”

“…With better awareness these professionals could then act as gatekeepers and better refer individuals to appropriate psychological and social welfare support services (44). In Sweden landlords are required to inform local government authorities if they wish to evict their tenants; this can give the local authority a chance to see what help it can provide for a tenant to avoid eviction and all the many adverse impacts that this would have (31).…”