Suicide and mental illness in low- and middle-income countries
OCT
22
2019
The topic of this year’s World Mental Health Day was suicide prevention, so the new systematic review by Knipe and colleagues is very timely. Suicide accounts for around 800,000 deaths worldwide per year. It is often assumed that people who die by suicide must have been suffering from mental illness, which shapes the way we think about how to prevent suicides (i.e. by providing mental health care to those who are at risk). However, our understanding of this issue is hindered by the fact that the majority of mental health research is done in high-income countries (HIC), whereas the majority of the world’s population lives in the rest of the world.
In HIC settings, 80% to 90% of people who die by suicide appear to meet diagnostic criteria for a mental disorder. However, 75% of deaths by suicide occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) and we know far less about the association between mental illness and suicide in these contexts. To inform global and national suicide prevention efforts, we need a better understanding of what leads to suicide in LMIC.
Knipe and colleagues therefore set out to estimate the prevalence of mental illness in people who attempted or completed suicide in LMIC, through a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Methods
The authors searched three databases covering medicine and psychology (although none dedicated to global health), from 1990 to 2018, and screened references of included papers.
More:
https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental-health/suicide/suicide-low-middle-income-countries/