Financial crisis to blame for increased suicides in Italy

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-The global financial crisis has contributed to an increase in the rates of suicide and attempted suicide for economic reasons in Italy, new research shows. A team of researchers, co-led by Roberto De Vogli, associate professor of health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, looked at data from 2000-10 and found an increase in suicides and attempted suicides for economic reasons during the entire period. Using a regression model that compared time-trends for the crisis years (2008-10) against those of the pre-crisis years (2000-07), this study estimated that, between 2008 and 2010, there were 290 excess suicides and attempted suicides due to economic reasons attributable to the Great recession. "These preliminary results have important policy implications. They suggest that, as seen in other European countries - for example, in Greece - the Great Recession and austerity packages designed to balance the budget deficit caused by the crisis, are causing significant human suffering in the general population," De Vogli said. Research partners included Sir Michael Gideon Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London, and David Stuckler, university lecturer in sociology, University of Cambridge. In what the authors call "the first grassroots movement on mental health in Europe" widows of men who killed themselves had protested in May at tax offices in Bologna, Italy, claiming that, "austerity and tax collection put their husbands at risk." Yet, not all who heard their campaign believed in what some are calling "suicides by economic crisis", which prompted the team to analyze data compiled by the Italian Institute of National Statistics.