IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v61y2005i7p1551-1559.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mental health and socio-economic variations in Australian suicide

Author

Listed:
  • Taylor, Richard
  • Page, Andrew
  • Morrell, Stephen
  • Harrison, James
  • Carter, Greg

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between suicide rates and prevalence of mental disorder and suicide attempts, across socio-economic status (SES) groups based on area of residence. Australian suicide data (1996-1998) were analysed in conjunction with area-based prevalences of mental disorder derived from the National Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being (1997). Poisson regression models of suicide risk included age, quintile of area-based SES, urban-rural residence, and country of birth (COB), with males and females analysed separately. Analysis focussed on the association between suicide and prevalences of (ICD-10) affective disorders, anxiety disorders, substance use disorders and suicide attempts by SES group. Prevalences of other psychiatric symptomatology, substance use problems, health service utilisation, stressful life-events and personality were also investigated. Significant increasing gradients were evident from high to low SES groups for prevalences of affective disorders, anxiety disorders (females only), and substance use disorders (males only); sub-threshold drug and alcohol problems and depression; and suicide attempts and suicide (males only). Prevalences of mental disorder, other sub-threshold mental health items and suicide attempts were significantly associated with suicide, but in most cases associations were reduced in magnitude and became statistically non-significant after adjustment for COB, urban-rural residence, and SES. For male suicide the relative risk (RR) in the lowest SES group compared to the highest was 1.40 (95% CI 1.29-1.52, p

Suggested Citation

  • Taylor, Richard & Page, Andrew & Morrell, Stephen & Harrison, James & Carter, Greg, 2005. "Mental health and socio-economic variations in Australian suicide," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(7), pages 1551-1559, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:61:y:2005:i:7:p:1551-1559
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(05)00081-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morrell, Stephen & Taylor, Richard & Slaytor, Emma & Ford, Paul, 1999. "Urban and rural suicide differentials in migrants and the Australian-born, New South Wales, Australia 1985-1994," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 81-91, July.
    2. Schwartz, S., 1994. "The fallacy of the ecological fallacy: The potential misuse of a concept and the consequences," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 84(5), pages 819-824.
    3. Morrell, Stephen & Taylor, Richard & Quine, Susan & Kerr, Charles, 1993. "Suicide and unemployment in Australia 1907-1990," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 749-756, March.
    4. Taylor, Richard & Morrell, Stephen & Slaytor, Emma & Ford, Paul, 1998. "Suicide in urban New South Wales, Australia 1985-1994: socio-economic and migrant interactions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 47(11), pages 1677-1686, December.
    5. Marmot, Michael & Ryff, Carol D. & Bumpass, Larry L. & Shipley, Martin & Marks, Nadine F., 1997. "Social inequalities in health: Next questions and converging evidence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 901-910, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Zhuoyang & Page, Andrew & Martin, Graham & Taylor, Richard, 2011. "Attributable risk of psychiatric and socio-economic factors for suicide from individual-level, population-based studies: A systematic review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(4), pages 608-616, February.
    2. Kim, Myoung-Hee & Jung-Choi, Kyunghee & Jun, Hee-Jin & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2010. "Socioeconomic inequalities in suicidal ideation, parasuicides, and completed suicides in South Korea," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(8), pages 1254-1261, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Page, Andrew & Morrell, Stephen & Taylor, Richard & Dudley, Michael & Carter, Greg, 2007. "Further increases in rural suicide in young Australian adults: Secular trends, 1979-2003," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 442-453, August.
    2. Ana Lucia Abeliansky & Holger Strulik, 2023. "Health and aging before and after retirement," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(4), pages 2825-2855, October.
    3. Wong, Sandy, 2016. "Geographies of medicalized welfare: Spatial analysis of supplemental security income in the U.S., 2000–2010," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 9-19.
    4. Smith, Kimberly V. & Goldman, Noreen, 2007. "Socioeconomic differences in health among older adults in Mexico," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(7), pages 1372-1385, October.
    5. Maike Tahden & Juliane Manitz & Klaus Baumgardt & Gerhard Fell & Thomas Kneib & Guido Hegasy, 2016. "Epidemiological and Ecological Characterization of the EHEC O104:H4 Outbreak in Hamburg, Germany, 2011," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-19, October.
    6. Chengzhi Yi & Linsha Wei & Cuihong Long, 2023. "Does medical insurance improve health? An empirical analysis from China," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 829-846, May.
    7. Jorge Medina, 2021. "Regional Effects of Perceived Risks of Harm on Cigarette Smoking among U.S. High School Seniors: Evidence from Monitoring the Future," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(17), pages 1-12, August.
    8. Karen Witten & Daniel Exeter & Adrian Field, 2003. "The Quality of Urban Environments: Mapping Variation in Access to Community Resources," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 40(1), pages 161-177, January.
    9. Chen, Duan-Rung & Chang, Ly-Yun & Yang, Meng-Li, 2008. "Gender-specific responses to social determinants associated with self-perceived health in Taiwan: A multilevel approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(10), pages 1630-1640, November.
    10. Goldberg, Jessica & Bumgarner, Erin & Jacobs, Francine, 2016. "Measuring program- and individual-level fidelity in a home visiting program for adolescent parents," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 163-173.
    11. Ibrahim, S. & Smith, P. & Muntaner, C., 2009. "A multi-group cross-lagged analyses of work stressors and health using Canadian National sample," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 49-59, January.
    12. John, Dolly A. & de Castro, A.B. & Martin, Diane P. & Duran, Bonnie & Takeuchi, David T., 2012. "Does an immigrant health paradox exist among Asian Americans? Associations of nativity and occupational class with self-rated health and mental disorders," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(12), pages 2085-2098.
    13. Semaan, Salaam & Sternberg, Maya & Zaidi, Akbar & Aral, Sevgi O., 2007. "Social capital and rates of gonorrhea and syphilis in the United States: Spatial regression analyses of state-level associations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(11), pages 2324-2341, June.
    14. Darren J. Mayne & Geoffrey G. Morgan & Bin B. Jalaludin & Adrian E. Bauman, 2018. "Does Walkability Contribute to Geographic Variation in Psychosocial Distress? A Spatial Analysis of 91,142 Members of the 45 and Up Study in Sydney, Australia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-24, February.
    15. Craig A. Talmage & Chad Frederick, 2019. "Quality of Life, Multimodality, and the Demise of the Autocentric Metropolis: A Multivariate Analysis of 148 Mid-Size U.S. Cities," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 141(1), pages 365-390, January.
    16. Grace Lordan & Eliana Jimenez Soto & Richard P. C. Brown & Ignacio Correa‐Valez, 2012. "Socioeconomic status and health outcomes in a developing country," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(2), pages 178-186, February.
    17. Jason M. Fletcher & Jody L. Sindelar, 2009. "Estimating Causal Effects of Early Occupational Choice on Later Health: Evidence Using the PSID," NBER Working Papers 15256, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Brown, Sarah & Taylor, Karl & Wheatley Price, Stephen, 2005. "Debt and distress: Evaluating the psychological cost of credit," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 642-663, October.
    19. Christian Dustmann & Frank Windmeijer, 2000. "Wages and the demand for health - a life cycle analysis," IFS Working Papers W99/20, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    20. Heydari, Ali & Laroche, Michel & Paulin, Michèle & Richard, Marie-Odile, 2021. "Hofstede's individual-level indulgence dimension: Scale development and validation," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:61:y:2005:i:7:p:1551-1559. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.