Gender-specific differences and the impact of family integration on time trends in age-stratified Swiss suicide rates

Abstract

Suicide has become one of the leading causes of death of Swiss males aged between 15 and 44 years, whose age-standardized rates are about three times higher than those for females. We compared age-stratified suicide rates of Swiss men and women aged 15-79 years and analysed gender-specific differences from 1950 to 2007. Furthermore, we explored whether changes in measures of family integration can explain changes in suicide trends. The use of multivariate age-period-cohort models avoids age aggregation and allows the exploration of heterogeneous time trends across age, period and birth cohort. In addition, explanatory variables can be included. We found strong gender-specific differences in suicide mortality. Although the same risk factors may act on age and overdispersion, there was no significant correlation between gender-specific cohort effects. Family integration had an effect on Swiss suicide risk but only partially explained the underlying trends over time. © 2011 Royal Statistical Society.