Inequalities in Daily Variations of Deaths from Suicide in Lithuania: Identification of Possible Risk Factors

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze daily variations in mortality from suicides of Lithuanian urban and rural populations in two different periods of economic and political development of the country (1988-1990 and 1998-2000). The highest proportion of suicides occurred on Mondays and during the first days after the major public holidays, especially in men. Suicide mortality in rural areas was significantly higher in comparison to urban; nevertheless, daily variation was more marked in urban areas. Developing market economy and rising unemployment did not increase daily variation in suicides.

Seasonal Differences in the Day-of-the-Week Pattern of Suicide in Queensland, Australia

“…A significant IRR indicates a significant difference in the adjusted suicide risk between the corresponding day of the week and the time reference period. In identifying the “high risk time” of suicide, the day of the week with the lowest risk of suicide was used as the reference [4,5,7]. …”

“…In an effort to understand and explain the phenomenon, many studies on this topic have mainly focused on the monthly or seasonal patterns, or patterns of the day of the week and time of the day [2]. Literature on day-of-the-week pattern of suicide, mainly from the Northern Hemisphere, has consistently found a peak on Mondays and a nadir on weekends [3,4,5,6]. Other temporal patterns by season, by month, and so forth have also been examined, which identified a particular peak in the number of suicide in late spring or early summer for men, a bimodal distribution pattern with peaks in spring and autumn for women and a nadir in winter months for both sexes [2,5,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18].…”

“…As the second largest state of Australia with a population of 4.47 million in 2011, Queensland has the highest incidence of youth suicide in the nation [19] and is a potentially interesting region of the study of temporal variation of suicide [10]. Because previous work by Kalediene and Petrauskiene [4] has shown the day-of-the-week patterns differ significantly between urban and rural residents, suicide mortality of Greater Brisbane (as a proxy of urban population) and the rest of Queensland population (as a proxy for rural population) were separately assessed in the present study.…”

Suicides following inpatient psychiatric hospitalization: A nationwide case control study

“…There is a strong tradition of suicide research in Hungary (Balazs et al, 2006;Rihmer et al, 1990;Rihmer et al, 2013;Szanto et al, 2007), and modest tradition of suicide research in Lithuania (Kalediene, 1999;Kalediene and Petrauskiene, 2004), Estonia (Varnik, 1991;Varnik et al, 2005), Slovenia (Oravecz et al, 2007;Ziher and Zalar, 2006) and Czech Republic (Dzurova et al, 2008). However, no nation wide study based on individual data from registers has been conducted in the region of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe.…”

Las cenas navideñas de empresa. ¿Un modelo de consumo recreativo de alcohol y otras drogas?

“…Se han realizado estudios de campo para comparar los niveles de intoxicación etílica en determinadas celebraciones anuales, tales como Halloween o el día de San Patricio 11 , eventos conocidos en Estados Unidos por el gran consumo de alcohol asociado a su celebración. Otros trabajos, a su vez, han puesto de manifiesto las consecuencias asociadas a los incrementos del consumo abusivo de alcohol en las diferentes celebraciones puntuales, especialmente las navideñas, tales como las arritmias del "Holiday Heart" o síndrome del corazón post-vacacional 12,13,14,15,16 , la pancreatitis 17 , y las muertes por intoxicación etílica 18,19,20,21,22 . Apenas existen estudios que relacionen el incremento de consumo abusivo de otro tipo de drogas durante estos eventos con la problemática que conlleva, aunque sí que se ha encontrado relación entre el consumo abusivo puntual de cannabis y el síndrome del corazón post-vacacional 23 .…”