The ongoing economic crisis has spurred researchers to further investigate the positive association between unemployment and suicide.1 Two theories may explain the above association: the ‘causal’ theory (ie, job loss leads to the emergence of factors (eg, depression) that precipitate suicide) and the ‘selection’ theory (ie, subjects who are more prone to commit suicide (eg, suffer from mental illnesses) are also more prone to lose their job).2 ,3 The hypothesis that during economic booms suicide rate (SR) of the unemployed population is higher than it is during times of recession follows from …