IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socpsy/v66y2020i1p67-75.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is unemployment less important than expected for suicide attempted in developing regions? Occupational profile of suicide attempts in Jujuy, north westernmost Argentina

Author

Listed:
  • Lorena Cecilia López Steinmetz
  • Romina Lucrecia López Steinmetz
  • Juan Carlos Godoy

Abstract

Background: Mental health practices consider unemployment as a suicide main risk factor, based on models built for populations of developed countries. Aim: This study assesses the association between the occupational risk factor and suicidal behaviors, by considering sex, age and temporal distribution, in a Latin American Andean population from north westernmost Argentina. Methods: Data include 481 suicide attempt cases assisted by emergency service psychologists at a head hospital in the Jujuy Province, northern Argentina, during two biennials. General categories and specific types of occupational situation, sex, age and temporal distribution were analyzed. Results: 83.58% of cases corresponded to the with occupation category, but without occupation characterized male cases ( p -value = .01). The type no referred occupation (19.15%) mainly contributed to this association ( p -value = .02). Unemployed only represented 1.6%. These features revealed independent from the biennial period of assistance ( p -value = .96 (general), p -value = .86 (specific)). Associations by age ranges did not seem to be specific of suicidal attempts. Conclusion: The present contribution provides an occupational characterization of suicide attempts in an Andean population from north westernmost Argentina. Unemployment is not associated with suicidal behavior in this population, suggesting that dissimilar patterns underlie suicidal behavior of populations from developed and developing regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Lorena Cecilia López Steinmetz & Romina Lucrecia López Steinmetz & Juan Carlos Godoy, 2020. "Is unemployment less important than expected for suicide attempted in developing regions? Occupational profile of suicide attempts in Jujuy, north westernmost Argentina," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 66(1), pages 67-75, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:66:y:2020:i:1:p:67-75
    DOI: 10.1177/0020764019882728
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0020764019882728
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0020764019882728?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garcy, A.M. & Vagerö, D., 2013. "Unemployment and suicide during and after a deep recession: A longitudinal study of 3.4 million swedish men and women," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 103(6), pages 1031-1038.
    2. 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.
    3. Platt, Stephen & Micciolo, Rocco & Tansella, Michele, 1992. "Suicide and unemployment in Italy: Description, analysis and interpretation of recent trends," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 1191-1201, June.
    4. Berta Rivera & Bruno Casal & Luis Currais, 2017. "Crisis, suicide and labour productivity losses in Spain," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 18(1), pages 83-96, January.
    5. Platt, Stephen, 1984. "Unemployment and suicidal behaviour: A review of the literature," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 93-115, January.
    6. Garcy, Anthony M. & Vågerö, Denny, 2012. "The length of unemployment predicts mortality, differently in men and women, and by cause of death: A six year mortality follow-up of the Swedish 1992–1996 recession," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(12), pages 1911-1920.
    7. Coope, Caroline & Gunnell, David & Hollingworth, William & Hawton, Keith & Kapur, Nav & Fearn, Vanessa & Wells, Claudia & Metcalfe, Chris, 2014. "Suicide and the 2008 economic recession: Who is most at risk? Trends in suicide rates in England and Wales 2001–2011," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 76-85.
    8. 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.
    9. Allison Milner & Andrew Page & Anthony D LaMontagne, 2013. "Long-Term Unemployment and Suicide: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(1), pages 1-6, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Allison Milner & Andrew Page & Anthony D LaMontagne, 2013. "Long-Term Unemployment and Suicide: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(1), pages 1-6, January.
    2. Andrew Phiri & Doreen Mukuku, 2020. "Does unemployment aggravate suicide rates in South Africa? Some empirical evidence," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 78(4), pages 532-560, October.
    3. Giorgio Mattei & Barbara Pistoresi, 2019. "Unemployment and suicide in Italy: evidence of a long-run association mitigated by public unemployment spending," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(4), pages 569-577, June.
    4. Anyikwa, Izunna & Hamman, Nicolene & Phiri, Andrew, 2018. "Persistence of suicides in G20 countries: SPSM approach to three generations of unit root tests," MPRA Paper 87790, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Woorim Kim & Myung Ki & Minjae Choi & Areum Song, 2019. "Comparable Risk of Suicidal Ideation between Workers at Precarious Employment and Unemployment: Data from the Korean Welfare Panel Study, 2012–2017," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(16), pages 1-10, August.
    6. Chang, Tsangyao & Chen, Wen-Yi, 2017. "Revisiting the relationship between suicide and unemployment: Evidence from linear and nonlinear cointegration," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 266-278.
    7. Niedzwiedz, Claire L. & Thomson, Katie H. & Bambra, Clare & Pearce, Jamie R., 2020. "Regional employment and individual worklessness during the Great Recession and the health of the working-age population: Cross-national analysis of 16 European countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    8. Phillips, Julie A. & Nugent, Colleen N., 2014. "Suicide and the Great Recession of 2007–2009: The role of economic factors in the 50 U.S. states," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 22-31.
    9. Chungah Kim & Youngtae Cho, 2017. "Does Unstable Employment Have an Association with Suicide Rates among the Young?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-14, April.
    10. Nikolaos Antonakakis & Rangan Gupta, 2017. "Is Economic Policy Uncertainty Related to Suicide Rates? Evidence from the United States," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 133(2), pages 543-560, September.
    11. Barr, Ben & Kinderman, Peter & Whitehead, Margaret, 2015. "Trends in mental health inequalities in England during a period of recession, austerity and welfare reform 2004 to 2013," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 324-331.
    12. Andrew E. Clark, 2018. "Four Decades of the Economics of Happiness: Where Next?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 245-269, June.
    13. Andrew E. Clark, 2009. "Work, jobs and well-being across the Millennium," Working Papers halshs-00566139, HAL.
    14. Aysit Tansel & H. Mehmet Taşçı, 2010. "Hazard Analysis of Unemployment Duration by Gender in a Developing Country: The Case of Turkey," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 24(4), pages 501-530, December.
    15. Mitch Kunce, 2022. "The Tenuous Ecological Divorce and Unemployment Link with Suicide: A U.S. Panel Analysis 1968-2020," Journal of Statistical and Econometric Methods, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 11(3), pages 1-2.
    16. Abdou, Rawayda & Cassells, Damien & Berrill, Jenny & Hanly, Jim, 2020. "An empirical investigation of the relationship between business performance and suicide in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    17. Clark, Andrew & Knabe, Andreas & Rätzel, Steffen, 2010. "Boon or bane? Others' unemployment, well-being and job insecurity," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 52-61, January.
    18. Bonamore, Giorgio & Carmignani, Fabrizio & Colombo, Emilio, 2015. "Addressing the unemployment–mortality conundrum: Non-linearity is the answer," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 67-72.
    19. Hanen Harrabi & Marie-Josee Aubin & Maria Victoria Zunzunegui & Slim Haddad & Ellen E Freeman, 2014. "Visual Difficulty and Employment Status in the World," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(2), pages 1-6, February.
    20. John Gibson & Garth Heutel, 2020. "Pollution and Labor Market Search Externalities Over the Business Cycle," NBER Working Papers 27445, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:sae:socpsy:v:66:y:2020:i:1:p:67-75. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.