Citation

Lin CY, Hsu CY, Gunnell D, Chang SS. Asian J. Psychiatry 2022; 80: e103379.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ajp.2022.103379

PMID

36502779

PMCID

PMC9721156

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, outbreak control measures, and their consequences may worsen mental health and increase suicide risk. However, a study using data from 33 countries showed no increase in suicide in most countries studied during the first 9-15 months of the pandemic (Pirkis et al., 2022). Possible reasons for this lack of an impact on suicide rates are unclear. Further investigations using robust methodologies are required (Kahil et al., 2021, Tandon, 2021). We investigated changes in suicide trends and related them to the indicators of economic and outbreak control measures in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Suicide data by sex, age, method, and month in people aged 15+ years were extracted from national cause-of-death files. Suicide methods were classified using the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) codes (see Supplementary files for detailed codes). We used negative binomial regression models to estimate suicide rate ratios (RRs) and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) during the outbreak (January-May 2020) and post-outbreak (June-December 2020) periods, relative to that expected based on pre-pandemic trends (January 2015-December 2019). We controlled for the pre-pandemic suicide trends using fractional polynomials (Royston and Altman, 1994) and seasonal variations using Fourier terms (Stolwijk et al., 1999). Analyses stratified by sex, age, and suicide method were conducted as previous studies suggested sex and age differences (Okada, 2022). More details about COVID-19 case number data, economic and outbreak control measures indicators, and regression models were provided in the Supplementary files...

Language: en

Keywords

Suicide; Suicide methods; Taiwan; COVID-19 pandemic