Increase in suicide following an initial decline during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan

Takanao Tanaka and Shohei Okamoto ()
Additional contact information
Takanao Tanaka: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Shohei Okamoto: Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology

Nature Human Behaviour, 2021, vol. 5, issue 2, 229-238

Abstract: Abstract There is increasing concern that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic could harm psychological health and exacerbate suicide risk. Here, based on month-level records of suicides covering the entire Japanese population in 1,848 administrative units, we assessed whether suicide mortality changed during the pandemic. Using difference-in-difference estimation, we found that monthly suicide rates declined by 14% during the first 5 months of the pandemic (February to June 2020). This could be due to a number of complex reasons, including the government’s generous subsidies, reduced working hours and school closure. By contrast, monthly suicide rates increased by 16% during the second wave (July to October 2020), with a larger increase among females (37%) and children and adolescents (49%). Although adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic may remain in the long term, its modifiers (such as government subsidies) may not be sustained. Thus, effective suicide prevention—particularly among vulnerable populations—should be an important public health consideration.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01042-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:5:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1038_s41562-020-01042-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-020-01042-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().