Excess suicides in Brazil: Inequalities according to age groups and regions during the COVID-19 pandemic

Jesem Douglas Yamall Orellana and Maximiliano Loiola Ponte de Souza

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2022, vol. 68, issue 5, 997-1009

Abstract: Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has already claimed more than six million direct deaths. Low-and middle-income countries, such Brazil, were severely hit, not only due to direct effects on mortality, but also for its indirect effects on other causes of deaths. Aims: The objective of this study was to estimate the excess suicides in Brazil and evaluate patterns within and between its regions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Method: The observed suicides are gathered from the mortality information system of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The estimates of expected suicides, according to sex, age group, bimonthly period and region, were reached through quasi-Poisson generalized additive models, with adjustment for overdispersion. The analyses were performed in R software, version 3.6.1 and RStudio, version 1.2.1335. Results: From March 2020 to December 2020, 10,409 suicides were observed in Brazil, resulting in an overall decrease of 13%, in comparison to the expected rate for the period. There were excess suicides of 26% in men from the Northern region in the 60 years and more age group, as well as in women from the Northern region in the 30 to 59 years age group in two consecutive bimonthly periods. Excess suicides of 40% was also observed in women in the 60 years and more age group from the Northeastern region. Conclusions: Despite the overall decrease in suicides in Brazil over the period assessed, substantial excess suicides were observed in different age groups and sexes from the Northern and Northeastern regions of the country, which are regions that are historically more prone to health and socioeconomic inequalities.

Keywords: Mortality; COVID-19; suicide; health inequities; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00207640221097826 (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:sae:socpsy:v:68:y:2022:i:5:p:997-1009

DOI: 10.1177/00207640221097826

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().