Suicide rates and voting choice in the UK's 2016 national Brexit referendum on European Union membership: cross-sectional ecological investigation across England's local authority populations.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Individual- and area-level risk factors for suicide are relatively well-understood but the role of macro social factors such as alienation, social fragmentation or 'anomie' is relatively underresearched. Voting choice in the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union (EU) provides a potential measure of anomie. AIMS:To examine associations between percentage 'Leave' votes in the EU referendum and suicide rates in 2015-2017, the period just prior to, and following, the referendum. METHOD:National cross-sectional ecological study of 315 English local authority populations. Associations between voting choice in the EU referendum and age-standardised suicide rates, averaged for the years 2015, 2016 and 2017, were examined. RESULTS:Overall there was a weak, but stat

SUBMITTER: Steeg S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7345594 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature