Citation

Riebler A, Held L, Rue H, Bopp M. J. R .Stat. Soc. Ser. A Stat. Soc. 2012; 175(2): 473-490.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Royal Statistical Society (Great Britain), Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-985X.2011.01013.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Suicide has become one of the leading causes of death of Swiss males aged between 15 and 44 years, whose age-standardized rates are about three times higher than those for females. We compared age-stratified suicide rates of Swiss men and women aged 15-79 years and analysed gender-specific differences from 1950 to 2007. Furthermore, we explored whether changes in measures of family integration can explain changes in suicide trends. The use of multivariate age-period-cohort models avoids age aggregation and allows the exploration of heterogeneous time trends across age, period and birth cohort. In addition, explanatory variables can be included. We found strong gender-specific differences in suicide mortality. Although the same risk factors may act on age and overdispersion, there was no significant correlation between gender-specific cohort effects. Family integration had an effect on Swiss suicide risk but only partially explained the underlying trends over time. © 2011 Royal Statistical Society.

Language: en

Keywords

Suicide; Bayesian analysis; Switzerland; Family integration; Age-period-cohort model