Social determinants of health linked to suicide risk
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Key takeaways:
- Social determinants of health were associated with suicide risk.
- The findings suggest that addressing social vulnerability may lower the rate of suicide.
U.S. counties with greater social vulnerability had higher rates of suicide, according to data published in JAMA Network Open.
Shuhan Liu, BA, a master’s student in statistics at the University of Chicago, and colleagues evaluated associations between suicide and social determinants of health (SDOH) using county-level data from the CDC WONDER database from 2016 to 2020.
The researchers used two measures of social vulnerability that assessed SDOHs. The first was the CDC Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), which ranked each county’s vulnerability based on 17 SDOH indicators. The other measure was the Social Vulnerability Metric (SVM), which evaluated social vulnerability based on 94 SDOH indicators on the zip code-level.
Overall, there were 222,018 suicides in 3,141 counties. Of these, 2,401 counties had at least 10 suicides with a mean annual adult unadjusted suicide rate of 18.3 per 100,000 people.
Compared with counties ranked within the 10% least socially vulnerable, counties within the 10% most socially vulnerable counties had significantly higher suicide rates on both the SVI and the SVM. Specifically, the suicide rate was 56% higher when measured by the SVI (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 1.56; 95% credible interval [CrI]; 1.51-1.6) and 82% higher when measured by the SVM (IRR = 1.82; 95% CrI, 1.72-1.92).
“Our results provide a measurable approach to reducing suicide rates through interventions that target social vulnerability,” Liu and colleagues wrote. “Improving access to mental health services, through changes in and availability of insurance coverage for these services, can lead to reductions in suicide rates.”
The researchers also suggested efforts be made to decrease social isolation through support networks and community involvement, implement early prevention strategies and expand health care access overall.