Socioeconomic disparities in suicide: Causation or confounding?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Despite an overall reduction in suicide, educational disparities in suicide have not decreased over the last decade. The mechanisms behind educational disparities in suicide, however, remain unclear: low educational status may increase the risk of suicide ("causation") or low educational status and suicide may share confounders. This paper assesses whether educational disparities in suicide (EDS) are more likely to be due to causation.

Method

The DEMETRIQ study collected and harmonized register-based data on mortality follow-up from forty population censuses from twelve European populations. More than 102,000 suicides were registered over 392 million person-years. Three analyses were carried out. First, we applied an instrumental variable approach that exploits ch

SUBMITTER: Lorant V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7781379 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature