Geographical and Temporal Variation of Suicide in India, 2006-2015: An Investigation of Factors Associated with Suicide Risk Difference across States/Union Territories

Abstract

Background: In India, about 130,000 people died by suicide in the year 2015. It is important to understand the variation of suicide across different parts of India and the trend of suicide rates over the years. The objectives of this study were to determine whether suicide rates in India showed temporal variation in the last decade and to determine whether suicide rates in India showed geographical variation across different states and union territories (UTs). Methods: Data on suicide rates for the years 2006–2015 were collected from the official publication of the National Crime Records Bureau. This study looked for time trend in suicide rates over the years. Further, the variation in suicide rates across different states/UTs in India and the factors associated with the variation were also analyzed. Results: The average suicide rate in India for the years 2006–2015 was 10.9/100,000 population. Overall, there was no significant variation in the suicide rate over time in the years studied. The average suicide rate varied widely across the states and UTs, between 0.91 and 43.92 per 100,000 population. The analysis revealed a positive association between suicide rates and accident rates for the above years. In addition, for the year 2011, a positive association between suicide rate and per capita state domestic product was noted. Conclusion: There was no variation in the suicide rate in India over time. However, there were significant regional differences. Reporting differences and economic factors could partially explain the differences.

Is suicide prevention possible?

“…In 1897, Durkheim5 reported that a religious belief and affiliation protected against suicide. More than a century later, Ramamurthy and Thilakan14 made the same observation. It would not be appropriate for authorities to encourage religious participation as a means of protecting against suicide.…”

“…In comparison with high income countries, they found India had a larger rate of female suicides, and mental illness was less commonly present. Ramamurthy and Thilakan14 looked at geographical and temporal rate variation across India in the decade 2006-2015. For the whole country, there was no variation in rate over time.…”

“…Six regions had very high rates (average, 32/100,000) and six had very low rates (average, 1.6/100,000). Of the lower rate regions, two had large Christian populations and another two had large Muslim populations, suggesting that a religious affiliation has a protective function14.…”

Seasonality of Suicides among Victims Who Are under the Influence of Alcohol

“…However, recent research is not so clear. Although high suicide rates have been reported in Finland, Ireland and Italy in the summer, this model is much less expressed or even absent in studies conducted in England and Wales, Australia and New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland [26,27,28,29,30,31,32].…”

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Adolescent Self-Harm: Based on a National Emergency Department Information System

“…However, our results from the study years (i.e., 2016 to 2020) were inconsistent with the trend noted above. In many other countries, studies have noted differences in seasonal trends based on age and sex, with variations depending on the time and country of the study [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. Further research is necessary to determine whether the difference between the current and prior studies is due to a change in the seasonal trend of suicide attempts in Korea or differences according to age groups.…”