ArticlePloS one2020
Revisiting suicide rate during wartime: Evidence from the Sri Lankan civil war.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Comparison of mental health symptoms before and during the covid-19 pandemic: evidence from a systematic review and meta-analysis of 134 cohorts.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2023Pooled it
- The Impact of Recent Collective Trauma in Israel on Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating: An Overview and Clinical Perspective.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Suicides, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation among children and young people exposed to war: a scoping review.BMJ open · 2026Article
- Exposure to War-Related Stress and Suicidal Ideation: The Moderating Role of Interpersonal and Political Trust.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Suicide trends in Norway during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. A register-based cohort study.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
After the seminal work of Durkheim (1897), many subsequent studies have revealed a decline in suicide rates during wartime. However, their main focus was inter-state wars and whether the same argument holds for civil conflicts within a country is an important unresolved issue in the modern world. Moreover, the findings of the previous studies are not conclusive due to unobserved confounding factors. This study investigated the relationship between civil war and suicide rate through a more rigorous statistical approach using the Sri Lankan civil war as a case study. For this purpose, we employed a linear regression model with district and year fixed effects to estimate a difference-in-difference in the suicide rate between the peacetime and wartime periods as well as the contested and non-contested districts. The results indicate that the suicide rate in the contested districts in the wartime was significantly lower than the baseline by 11.8-14.4 points (95% CI 6.46-17.22 and 7.21-21.54, respectively), which corresponds to a 43-52% decline. The robustness of the possible confounding factors was analyzed and not noted to have so much effect as to alter the interpretation of the results. This finding supports the Durkheimian theory, which places importance on social integration as a determinant of suicide, even for civil conflicts.
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