Characteristics of immigrant suicide completers in a sample of suicide victims from Greece

Antonios Paraschakis, Ioannis Michopoulos, Christos Christodoulou, Filippos Koutsaftis, Lefteris Lykouras and Athanassios Douzenis

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2014, vol. 60, issue 5, 462-467

Abstract: Background: Immigrants have higher rates of suicidal behaviour in comparison to the indigenous population. Aims: To describe the characteristics of foreign nationality suicide completers and search for differences between them and native Greeks. This is the first study focused on immigrant suicide victims in Greece. Methods: Data were collected for all recorded cases of completed suicide for the two-year period November 2007 to October 2009 at the Athens Department of Forensic Medicine, the largest, by far, of its kind in Greece covering approximately 35% of the country’s population. The material was collected using the method of psychological autopsy as well as from the victims’ forensic records. Results: Nearly 10% of Greece’s 11 million population are of foreign nationality. Approximately half of them live in Athens and its suburbs, an area where 35% of Greece’s population lives. In our sample, 15.8% of the suicide victims were of foreign nationality (53 cases): 41 men (77.4%) and 12 women (22.6%). Higher suicide rates were found for citizens of Kuwaiti (9.1%), Somali (6.7%) and Afghan (0.9%) nationality (immigrant communities with very few members); the lower suicide rates were for individuals of Egyptian (0.01%), Ukrainian (0.01%) and Albanian (0.006%) nationality (the Albanian immigrant community is the largest in Greece). In comparison to their Greek counterparts, immigrant victims were younger (mean age 38.7 vs 54.9 years, p

Keywords: Immigrants; suicide victims; suicide completers; Greece (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:60:y:2014:i:5:p:462-467

DOI: 10.1177/0020764013496081

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