Historically it is known that economic crises, epidemics, or other risk scenarios influence the suicide rates of the affected populations. An potential increase in suicide rates in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic was therefore of concern. However, an analysis of international data from the first few months of the pandemic largely disproved this assumption (1). Studies from Germany, which have so far only examined smaller regional populations, also found no noticeable increase in suicide rates; for instance, the recent work from Wollschläger et al. (2) analyzed the Rhineland-Palatinate mortality register data from the year 2020 and found only minor deviations for the age group of >70 year olds. The present work is based on suicide statistics from three German federal states, which have a total of eleven million inhabitants, over a survey period up to and including December 2021. The aim is to update and expand the aforementioned studies with special consideration of age and gender.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 1866-0452 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.m2022.0198 ID - ref1 ER -