Socio-Economic Position and Suicidal Ideation in Men

Jane Pirkis, Dianne Currier, Peter Butterworth, Allison Milner, Anne Kavanagh, Holly Tibble, Jo Robinson and Matthew J. Spittal
Additional contact information
Jane Pirkis: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Dianne Currier: Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Peter Butterworth: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Allison Milner: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Anne Kavanagh: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Holly Tibble: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Jo Robinson: Centre for Health Equity, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia
Matthew J. Spittal: Centre for Mental Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3010, Australia

IJERPH, 2017, vol. 14, issue 4, 1-11

Abstract: People in low socio-economic positions are over-represented in suicide statistics and are at heightened risk for non-fatal suicidal thoughts and behaviours. Few studies have tried to tease out the relationship between individual-level and area-level socio-economic position, however. We used data from Ten to Men (the Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health) to investigate the relationship between individual-level and area-level socio-economic position and suicidal thinking in 12,090 men. We used a measure of unemployment/employment and occupational skill level as our individual-level indicator of socio-economic position. We used the Index of Relative Socio-Economic Disadvantage (a composite multidimensional construct created by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that combines information from a range of area-level variables, including the prevalence of unemployment and employment in low skilled occupations) as our area-level indicator. We assessed suicidal thinking using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9). We found that even after controlling for common predictors of suicidal thinking; low individual-level and area-level socio-economic position heightened risk. Individual-level socio-economic position appeared to exert the greater influence of the two; however. There is an onus on policy makers and planners from within and outside the mental health sector to take individual- and area-level socio-economic position into account when they are developing strategic initiatives.

Keywords: socio-economic position; suicidal ideation; disadvantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/4/365/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/4/365/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:4:p:365-:d:94682

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().