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Commentary
Strong evidence that the economic crisis caused a rise in suicides in Europe: the need for social protection
  1. Roberto De Vogli1,2,
  2. Michael Marmot1,
  3. David Stuckler3,4
  1. 1Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Division of Population Health, University College London, London, UK
  2. 2Department of Health Behaviour and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
  3. 3Department of Sociology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
  4. 4Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Roberto De Vogli, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, 1–19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK; r.devogli{at}ucl.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2012-202112

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    We are grateful for the interest our study has generated. Previous research reveals a sharp rise in suicides across Europe coinciding with the financial crisis,1 ,2 particularly in the worst-affected economies. In our recent short report we show a clear, statistically significant association of the economic crisis with the total number of suicides and suicide attempts due to economic reasons in Italy.3 One key advance of this study is that Italy's data can be disaggregated by causes of suicide, enabling us to reveal differential patterns. While there was a statistically significant rise in suicides due to the economic crisis, suicides due to non-economic reasons remained stable. Unfortunately, in their response, Fountoulakis and colleagues neglect these data, continuing to dismiss the growing evidence …

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors RDV contributed to conception, design, data analysis, interpretation of results, drafting of the article and review, and provided final approval for the final version. He is the guarantor of this manuscript. DS contributed to the review of the paper, data analysis and interpretation of results and provided final approval of the published version of the paper. MM contributed to the revision of the manuscript and provided final approval of the published, final version of the article.

    • Funding RDV is supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (RES-070-27-0034).

    • Competing interests None.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

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