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A ground-breaking new study of suicides in New South Wales has found that drought significantly increases suicide risk among rural males aged 30-49 years. The multi-disciplinary study, led by PhD student Ivan Hanigan from the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at The Australian National University in collaboration with ANU researchers Colin Butler and Michael Hutchinson and CSIRO researcher Phil Kokic, took data on suicides in NSW between 1970 and 2007, and compared it with climatic drought information. The results are published in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The research team set out to address the substantial concern in Australia that droughts increase suicide in farmers and farm workers. They found clear evidence to support this hypothesis, estimating around nine per cent of rural suicides in males aged 30-49 were due to drought over the entire study period. "Nine per cent may not sound like a big number,” said Mr Hanigan. "But over the course of the 38 years of our study, it's a significant figure.
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