Neighborhood Interactions and Suicide: a Population-Wide Study

• In Event: 150 - Regular Session. Health Disparities in Social Context

Abstract

Despite numerous studies, we are still not certain whether characteristics of one’s neighborhood have any impact on suicide risk. This study seeks to clarify the mechanisms linking neighborhood contexts and suicide, focusing on the effect of individuals’ relative positions in their neighborhoods. A unique dataset with detailed individual-level information of all 1.4 million adults ever lived in the larger Stockholm metropolitan area between 1990 and 1998 was used to test the mechanisms. Multilevel analyses show that living among similar neighbors reduced suicide risk: (1) Socially disadvantaged groups -- social welfare benefit recipients and ethnic minorities -- were found to have a lower suicide rate when they lived among similar neighbors; (2) In rich neighborhoods, people of low income are more likely to commit suicide than people of high income, but the pattern reverse in poor neighborhoods: people of high income are more likely to commit suicide than their poorer counterparts in low income areas. Such contextual dependency can generate diverse patterns of association at the aggregate level and could have contributed to the conflicting results in the literature. The findings suggest social support and social comparison are important neighborhood mechanisms.

Authors

• Ka-yuet Liu, University of California-Los Angeles

• Christine Fountain, Fordham University