The geography of self-injury: Spatial patterns in attempted and completed suicide

Katherine Hempstead

Social Science & Medicine, 2006, vol. 62, issue 12, 3186-3196

Abstract: This study uses hospital discharge data, death certificates and medical examiner data for New Jersey for 1999-2001 to investigate whether fatal and non-fatal self-injury exhibit similar geographic patterns. Findings show that the demographic characteristics of individuals committing fatal and non-fatal self-injury are quite different. Furthermore, attempted and completed suicides have a somewhat different geographical pattern. Municipality-level determinants of suicide and non-fatal self-injury were estimated in two separate models. While measures of isolation such as low population density and high proportions of households with only one member were predictive of completed suicides, non-fatal self-injury was related to unemployment and median age. Both types of self-injury were more common in municipalities which lost population between 1990 and 2000, and where divorce rates were high. Population-based suicide prevention efforts should be aided by the knowledge that although there are some similarities in the spatial pattern of completed and attempted suicides, there are some important differences in significant determinants.

Keywords: Suicide; Self-injury; Rural-urban; Spatial; Attempted; suicide; USA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(05)00643-X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:socmed:v:62:y:2006:i:12:p:3186-3196

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().