Gestor bibliográfico Crisis y Salud

Aaron Reeves and colleagues1 suggest that the suicide rate in the USA has increased since 2007 in direct correlation to the increase in unemployment caused by economic recession. However, although this correlation seems strong, the cause and effect interpretation remains problematic. In the data Reeves and colleagues provide in their appendix, there is a temporal advance of the rise in suicides in relation to the rise in unemployment. Thus if a causative correlation really exists between the two, and since the cause should appear first and the effect should follow, then the inevitable conclusion should be that suicides cause unemployment and not vice versa.