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Rural‐Urban Differences in Suicide Rates for Current Patients of a Public Mental Health Service in Australia
Author(s) -
Sankaranarayanan Anoop,
Carter Gregory,
Lewin Terry
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
suicide and life‐threatening behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.544
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1943-278X
pISSN - 0363-0234
DOI - 10.1521/suli.2010.40.4.376
Subject(s) - mental health , suicide prevention , poison control , socioeconomic status , medicine , occupational safety and health , injury prevention , public health , urban community , demography , environmental health , rural area , human factors and ergonomics , gerontology , psychiatry , population , nursing , pathology , sociology
Rural versus urban rates of suicide in current patients of a large area mental health service in Australia were compared. Suicide deaths were identified from compulsory root cause analyses of deaths, 2003–2007. Age‐standardized rates of suicide were calculated for rural versus urban mental health service and compared using variance of age‐standardized rates with 95% confidence intervals. There were 44 suicides and the majority (62%) were rural. Only urban patients used jumping from heights as a method of suicide (4/17; p = 0.02). Rural patients had 2.7 times higher rates of suicide, similar to findings for rural versus urban community suicides and may reflect the underlying community rates, differences in mental health service delivery, or socioeconomic disadvantage.