ArticleEnvironmental health and preventive medicine2020
Association between lithium in tap water and suicide mortality rates in Miyazaki Prefecture.
Article in Environmental health and preventive medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- History of Suicide Prevention with Lithium Treatment.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Lithium in Drinking Water and its Potential Impact on Mental Health: A Review.Current medicinal chemistry · 2025Review
- Position sensitive measurement of trace lithium in the brain with NIK (neutron-induced coincidence method) in suicide.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMost studies have reported that suicide mortality rates are negatively associated with lithium levels in tap water; however, a few studies showed either no association or a positive association. Thus, the association between suicide mortality and lithium levels in tap water remains controversial. To clarify the association, our study evaluated the association between lithium levels in tap water and suicide mortality rates in Miyazaki Prefecture of Japan, after adjusting for confounding factors.
methodsWe measured lithium levels in tap water across the 26 municipalities of Miyazaki Prefecture in Japan. We examined the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) for suicide in each municipality and used the data as the average suicide SMRs over 5 years (2009-2013). Weighted least-squares regression analysis, adjusted for the size of each municipality's population, was used to investigate the association between lithium levels in tap water and suicide SMRs. In addition to a crude model, in an adjusted model, potential confounding factors (proportion of elderly people, proportion of one-person households, annual marriage rate, annual mean income, unemployment rate, the density of medical doctors per 100,000 people, annual total rainfall, and proportion of people with a college education or higher) were added as covariates.
resultsWe showed that male and female suicide SMRs were not associated with lithium levels in tap water in Miyazaki Prefecture. After adjusting for confounders, male suicide SMRs were significantly and positively associated with the proportion of elderly people in the population and annual total rainfall, and female suicide SMRs were associated with the proportion of elderly people in the population.
conclusionsNo association between lithium levels in tap water and suicide mortality rates was found in Miyazaki Prefecture.
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