14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists writing in the latest issue of the prestigious British Medical Journal say that more than 1,000 yearly suicides can be attributed to the current economic recession. The team behind the study say that there are multiple factors pushing people to take their own lives.
In the research paper, experts from the University of Liverpool, University of Cambridge, and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine say that suicide rates have largely been declining in the UK over the past 20 years. However, the decline regressed in 2008, when the recession began.
Throughout 2008, 8 percent more men and 9 percent more women committed suicide than in 2007. By 2010, these values decreased somewhat, but were still above 2007 levels, PsychCentral reports. The data used in the study were taken from the National Clinical and Health Outcomes Database.
“Although the initial economic shock of the recession does increase suicide risk, policies that promote re-employment may reverse this trend,” the joint team writes in the BMJ paper.