Abstract
There has been no research on whether particularly vulnerable people such as the unemployed are prone to being in a suicide cluster (defined as an unusually high number of suicides occurring in a defined geographical area and/or over a relatively brief period of time). We investigated the presence of unemployed suicide clusters in Australia over the period 2001–2013 using a Poisson discrete scan statistic approach. Spatial, temporal and spatial/temporal clusters comprised 13.4, 4.4 and 1.7% of all unemployed suicides respectively. These results suggest the importance of targeting preventative efforts in where large numbers of unemployed persons who have died by suicide resided before death.
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Funding was provided by Australian Rotary Health, Deakin University and American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (SRG-1-091-13). We thank Suzanne Mavoa for her suggestions regarding the analytic approach.
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Milner, A., Too, L.S. & Spittal, M.J. Cluster Suicides Among Unemployed Persons in Australia Over the Period 2001–2013. Soc Indic Res 137, 189–201 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1604-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1604-6