Gestor bibliográfico Crisis y Salud

The ongoing economic crisis has spurred researchers to further investigate the positive association between unemployment and suicide.1 Two theories may explain the above association: the ‘causal’ theory (ie, job loss leads to the emergence of factors (eg, depression) that precipitate suicide) and the ‘selection’ theory (ie, subjects who are more prone to commit suicide (eg, suffer from mental illnesses) are also more prone to lose their job).2 ,3 The hypothesis that during economic booms suicide rate (SR) of the unemployed population is higher than it is during times of recession follows from both theories.3 Some studies have already investigated this hypothesis (with somewhat inconclusive results), but according to our knowledge no investigation has yet been conducted apropos of the current recession.2–5 Therefore, we tested this hypothesis on Hungarian data (table 1). For some methodological reasons, the study period was confined to 1999–2012.