Suicide in contemporary Brazil

Abstract

As a major public health problem, the interest of the international organizations in the issue of problematic of suicide mortality, wether in the different age groups or socioeconomic segments, is not recent. Sociology itself, since its onset, explains the phenomenon from its structural determinants. Official statistics indicate that Brazil is the eighth country with the largest number of suicides in the world, however, there are few studies that deal with the subject, although suicide has high prevalence in many contemporary societies. Based on this literature gap, this article presents the patterns of suicide deaths in Brazil between 1980 and 2010, using information from the Mortality Information System - SIM/DataSUS, of the Ministry of Health. Using as a unit of analysis the municipalities, exploratory and econometric analyzes were used to verify the effect of social integration’s elements on suicide rates. Additionally, we investigated how space is a relevant variable for the study of this phenomenon, indicating for two large spatial clusters of regions in Brazil. The results point to a possible association between factors of low social integration and higher suicide rates in Brazil.