Gestor bibliográfico Crisis y Salud

Mindaugas Stankunas and colleagues suggest that the Baltics did not experience a rise in suicides during the 2008 recession. Yet, as their data show, suicide rates did rise between 2007 and 2009 in the Baltic states, increasing by 11% in Lithuania and 16% in Latvia, for example-reversing earlier steep declines. Konstantinos Fountoulakis and colleagues continue to dispute evidence from multiple independent researchers of a role for recessions and unemployment in suicide.1 In doing so, they disregard clear evidence that the rise in US suicide rates after the recession is a significant deviation from past trends, unlike earlier non-significant year-to-year variations. Their observation that suicides rose before unemployment ignores micro-level and macro-level analyses that show the importance of anticipation of job loss,2 as well as our statements that unemployment is only one of the factors that increase suicide in a recession, with others, such as the rise in personal debt and mortgage foreclosures (which occur before rises in unemployment), also affecting mental health.3