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Social and economic factors associated with suicide in Australia: a focus on individual income

Authors: 
Professor Nicholas Biddle
Dinith Marasinghe
Lucy Ellen

26 July 2022

The Australian National University’s Centre for Social Research and Methods (CSRM) was commissioned by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) to conduct further analysis on social and economic factors associated with suicide using the Multi-Agency Data Integration (MADIP) linked data asset.

This work produced a regression model including income level, income uncertainty, and unemployment associated with death by suicide.

This report has accompanying data tables.

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Suicide mortality in Australia: Estimating and projecting monthly variation and trends from 2007 to 2018 and beyond

Authors: 
Professor Nicholas Biddle
Lucy Ellen
Associate Professor Rosemary Korda
Dr Karuna Reddy

28 September 2020

Addendum: 9 December 2021

In analysing trends in suicide rates it is important to assess whether changes are genuine or whether they simply reflect expected data variation. In other OECD countries such as the US and the UK it is common practice to assess whether changes in suicide rates are statistically significant. In this paper Biddle et al. assess the statistical properties of the monthly suicide rate in Australia from 2007 to 2018. Over this whole period suicide rates rose nationally and in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia but were flat in other jurisdictions. The authors show that nationally, suicide rates were fairly steady from 2007 to 2010 but rose from 2010 to 2015 and have shown no clear trend since 2015. Overall, this pattern is quite similar for males and females however, death rates for males appear to have been approximately 3 times greater than for females at any given point in time. The authors also find clear seasonal patterns with January and February having the highest suicide rates and April to July having the lowest rates.

The addendum provides a descriptive comparison of the monthly forecasted deaths for the period of January 2019 till November 2019 from Biddle, Ellen, Korda and Reddy, with preliminary suicide deaths data for this same period, adjusted for the expected revisions process.

This report has accompanying data tables.

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Australian suicide and hospitalised self-harm monitoring data: A Scoping review of analytic methods used within the peer reviewed literature

Authors: 

Lucy Ellen
Professor Nicholas Biddle

9 December 2021

This scoping review identifies and describes the peer reviewed academic literature that uses Australian suicide and hospitalised self-harm monitoring data. The aim was to outline the analytic strategies authors use to draw meanings from this monitoring data, with a particular focus on change across time and spatial variance of suicide and hospitalised self-harm.

This report has accompanying data tables.

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Patterns of suicide in the context of COVID-19: Evidence from three Australian states

Authors: 

Dr Angela Clapperton
Associate Professor Matthew Spittal
Dr Jeremy Dwyer
Dr Andrew Garrett
Dr Kairi Kõlves
Dr Stuart Leske
Ciara Millar
Bronwen Edwards
Professor Jane Pirkis

8 December 2021

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) commissioned the University of Melbourne to conduct a study investigating whether there has been a change in the number of suicides occurring overall and in age and sex subgroups since the COVID-19 pandemic began. It also examined whether particular risk factors for suicide (namely relationship breakdown, financial stressors, unemployment, and homelessness) become more prominent as contributing factors for suicide during the pandemic.

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Suicide in Australia: Trends and analysis 1964 to 2018

Authors: 
AIHW
Henley G & Harrison JE

28 September 2020

Suicide rates at ages 10 years and older were examined for the Australian men and women born in each 5-year period from 1954–58 to 2004–08. Suicide rates for the most recently-born male cohorts are similar to, or lower than, earlier male cohorts at the same age. Suicide rates for the most recently-born female cohorts are higher than those for earlier female cohorts at the same age.

This report has accompanying data tables and data visualisations in Suicide & self-harm monitoring.

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National  Suicide and Self-Harm Monitoring Project and System|Data Requirements for the Portal

Authors: 

Phillippa Butt
Matthew Phillips
Johnny Chen
John Kershaw
Janey McGoldrick

26 July 2022

The AIHW contracted SAS Institute Australia and the Black Dog Institute, to conduct consultations with PHNs to identify key data priorities for the Suicide and self-harm monitoring system secure portal.

Feedback received included themes around data on risk factors leading up to a suicide, geocoded data at a finer level, and providing excel documents for further data analysis. These ideas were incorporated into the release of the portal in December and will inform continuous improvement of the System.

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Consultation with young people - Suicide & self-harm monitoring website - Summary report

9 December 2021

The AIHW and the National Mental Health Commission partnered with Orygen to hear from young people about their needs for suicide and self-harm information and their experience of the Suicide & self-harm monitoring website.

We heard that young people want to increase their knowledge of suicide to help themselves and their community, and that the website was a useful resource to do this.

We also heard that the website’s accessibility and functionality could be enhanced to improve engagement.

The AIHW are currently working on improving the website based on the feedback received.

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