ArticleJournal of epidemiology and community health2003
Unemployment and suicide. Evidence for a causal association?
Article in Journal of epidemiology and community health, 2003. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 116 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
116 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Employment and working conditions and risk of suicidal behaviors: a systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies.Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health · 2026Pooled it
- Risk and Protective Factors for Suicide Mortality in Youths: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JAMA network open · 2026Pooled it
- Sex differences in suicide, suicidal ideation, and self-harm after release from incarceration: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2023Pooled it
- Association of socio-economic position and suicide/attempted suicide in low and middle income countries in South and South-East Asia - a systematic review.BMC public health · 2015Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Impact of Tailored Interventions on Suicidal Ideation Recovery: Addressing Hopelessness Among Economically Vulnerable Populations During COVID-19 Period.Journal of Korean medical science · 2026Trial
- Trained lay health workers reduce common mental disorder symptoms of adults with suicidal ideation in Zimbabwe: a cohort study.BMC public health · 2018Trial
- Digitalized suicide risk assessment in emergency psychiatry services.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Economic shocks, food insufficiency and mental health: Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.PloS one · 2026Article
- Patterns and predictors of repeated violent suicide attempts: a retrospective clinical study from an acute trauma care setting.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Work-related suicide: an international social justice perspective.Crime, law, and social change · 2025Article
- Neurobehavioral pathways linking socioeconomic status hardship to suicide risk versus resilience in young adolescents: the roles of sleep health and default mode network connectivity.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- The status of suicide literacy and suicide stigma: their association with demographic factors among Iranian general population.BMC public health · 2025Article
- A cross-national analysis of demographic variation in self-rated mental health across 22 countries.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Network Analysis of Psychopathological Dimensions in Patients with and Without Suicidal Ideation.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The relationship between body roundness index (BRI) and suicidal ideation: evidence from NHANES 2013-2018.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Suicidal ideation among mental health patients at hospital discharge: prevalence and risk factors.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Preventing job loss and functional decline: Description and demonstration of the Veterans Health Administration supported Employment: Engage and Keep (SEEK) program.Psychological services · 2024Article
- Associations of Mortality Outcomes With Employment Status at Discharge From VA Vocational Rehabilitation Service Programs.Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Article
- Trends in cause-specific mortality: deaths of despair in Spain, 1980-2019.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
56 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo determine the independent associations of labour force status and socioeconomic position with death by suicide.
designCohort study assembled by anonymous and probabilistic record linkage of census and mortality records.
participants2.04 million respondents to the New Zealand 1991 census aged 18-64 years.
main outcome measureSuicide in the three years after census night.
resultsThe age adjusted odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) of death by suicide among 25 to 64 year olds who were unemployed compared with employed were 2.46 (1.10 to 5.49) for women and 2.63 (1.87 to 3.70) for men. Similarly increased odds ratios were observed for the non-active labour force compared with the employed. Strong age only adjusted associations of suicide death with the socioeconomic factors of education (men only), car access, and household income were observed. Compared with those who were married on census night, the non-married had odds ratios of suicide of 1.81 (1.22 to 2.69) for women and 2.08 (1.66 to 2.61) for men. In a multivariable model the association of socioeconomic factors with suicide reduced to the null. However, marital status and labour force status remained strong predictors of suicide death. Unemployment was also strongly associated with suicide death among 18-24 year old men. Sensitivity analyses suggested that confounding by mental illness might explain about half, but not all, of the association between unemployment and suicide.
conclusionsBeing unemployed was associated with a twofold to threefold increased relative risk of death by suicide, compared with being employed. About half of this association might be attributable to confounding by mental illness.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.