|
Abstract
|
BACKGROUND: The numbers of studies on the connections of physical and mental diseases with religiosity have increased in the past decades. Those that focused specifically on the relations of suicide and religiosity confirmed negative connection between suicide rates and religiosity.
AIM: Analyzing finely aggregated data by region, the authors have studied the impact of religiosity, or religious denomination on the patterns of suicide rates among culturally relatively homogenous Hungarian sub-regions.
METHOD: Stepwise linear regression analysis was used to examine the relationship of the dependent and independent variables. The novelty of the method used in the present analysis was the modeling on sub-regionally aggregated data. The dependent variable was the mean of suicide risk per 100,000 inhabitants of the 172 sub-regions between 1989 and 2010. Besides the data about the religiosity or religious denomination of the inhabitants of the sub-regions, the set of independent variables included several relevant demographic indicators of suicide patterns between 1989 and 2010.
RESULTS: The regression analysis resulted in a model with 28.2% explanatory power comprised of the set of variables including the demographic and religious indicators (rates of non-believers and believers of any religion). The rate of non-believers-as expected-was significantly associated with higher suicide rates in the sub-regions (β = 465; p < 0.001). Excluding the non-believers from the model, the preventive effect of the higher rate of Catholics has appeared (in case of Catholics: β =-0.743; p < 0.001; in case of Protestants: β =-0.378; p = 0.002). Data concerning the population of the districts of the capital did not follow the pattern above.
CONCLUSIONS: Our results on sub-regional data confirmed the protective role of religiosity-especially in case of Catholic religion-and/or the religious atmosphere against suicide risk. However, despite the lower rate of believers and/or the relative regional homogeneity, these effects did not emerge in the capital.
Language: hu |