Citation

Horita N, Moriguchi S. Lancet Psychiatry 2023; 10(7): 484-485.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S2215-0366(23)00159-1

PMID

37353259

Abstract

Sheri Madigan and colleagues' systematic review evaluates whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected paediatric emergency department visits for attempted suicide, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. They report that the combined rate of emergency department visits for attempted suicide and suicidal ideation increased among girls (rate ratio 1·39, 90% CI 1·04-1·88), whereas there was no significant change among boys (1·06, 0·92-1·24). We were interested in this difference between the sexes because the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have had a greater impact on the behaviour of girls than boys in Japan. Therefore, we decided to analyse cases of death by suicide among adolescents and young adults in Japan.

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare provided us with data on deaths by suicide, which were based on death certificates and covered all deaths in Japan. We used 10 years of data from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2022. We calculated the number of deaths by suicide for each 6 month interval for three age categories (10-14 years, 15-19 years, and 20-24 years), for both males and females. We used the Mann-Whitney test to compare deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic (from July, 2020 to June, 2022) with deaths occurring in the pre-pandemic era. On Feb 13, 2020, the first COVID-19-related death in Japan was reported in Kanagawa, where the Diamond Princess cruise ship had docked 10 days previously. The first state of emergency declaration took effect on April 7, 2020. Statistical significance was judged at a p value of 0·05 after Bonferroni correction multiplying the p value by 6.

Over the course of 10 years, a total of 9428 male and 3835 female young people died by suicide. We did not observe a significant change in the number of deaths in each 6 months between the pre-pandemic and pandemic eras for boys and men, however, deaths by suicide among girls and women increased significantly during the pandemic era in each age category...

Language: en