ArticleJournal of the Royal Society of Medicine2021
Suicide reduction in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons informing national prevention strategies for suicide reduction.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Suicide rates before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2024Pooled it
- Suicide Following the COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak: Variation Across Place, Over Time, and Across Sociodemographic Groups. A Systematic Integrative Review.Current psychiatry reports · 2023Pooled it
- Suicide before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Trends in Canadian Suicide Mortality by Age and Sex From 2000 to 2024: Tendances en matière de mortalité attribuable au suicide au Canada selon l'âge et le sexe, de 2000 à 2024.Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie · 2026Article
- Global Dynamics in Cosmetic Tourism.Aesthetic plastic surgery · 2026Article
- Article
- Understanding Canadian experiences of suicidality during the COVID-19 pandemic: protocol of a pan-Canadian qualitative study.BMJ open · 2025Article
- Burnout and Professional Quality of Life Amongst Crisis Hotline Responders: A Cross-Sectional Survey in Canada During COVID-19.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Suicide Mortality in Brazil: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Evidence of higher suicidal ideation among young adults in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Suicide-Related Emergency Department Visits Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States.Cureus · 2024Article
- The impact of the first year of COVID-19 pandemic on suicides in a collection of 27 EU-related countries.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Tannic acids and proanthocyanidins in tea inhibit SARS-CoV-2 variants infection.American journal of cancer research · 2024Article
- Quantifying the heterogeneous impact of lockdown policies on different socioeconomic classes during the first COVID-19 wave in Colombia.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Canadian news media coverage of suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2023Article
- Increased suicide rates in Mexico City during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak: An analysis spanning from 2016 to 2021.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Psychological mediators of the associations between pandemic-related stressors and suicidal ideation across three periods of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.Journal of affective disorders · 2023Observational
- Predicting depression and anxiety of Chinese population during COVID-19 in psychological evaluation data by XGBoost.Journal of affective disorders · 2023Article
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide rates in Hungary: an interrupted time-series analysis.BMC psychiatry · 2022Article
- Is an increase in Japan's suicides caused by COVID-19 alone?Asian journal of psychiatry · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveThe objective of this research was to evaluate the impact of federal, public health and social support programs on national suicide rates in Canada.
designCross-sectional study.
settingCanadian National Database (i.e., Statistics Canada) and Statista.
participantsPopulation-level data, and economic and consumer market data.
main outcome measuresSuicide mortality data, population data and unemployment data were obtained from available statistical databases (e.g. Statistics Canada). We quantified suicide rate by dividing the total number of suicide deaths by the national population expressed as a rate per 100,000 population.
resultsOverall suicide mortality rate decreased in Canada from 10.82 deaths per 100,000 in the March 2019 - February 2020 period to 7.34 per 100,000 (i.e. absolute difference of 1300 deaths) in the March 2020 - February 2021 period. The overall Canadian unemployment rate changed from an average monthly rate of 5.7% in 2019 to 9.5% in 2020.
conclusionOur results indicate that for the first post-pandemic interval evaluated (i.e., March 2020 - February 2021), suicide rates in Canada decreased against a background of extraordinary public health measures intended to mitigate community spread of COVID-19. An externality of public health measures was a significant rise in national unemployment rates in population measures of distress. Our results suggest that government interventions that broadly aim to reduce measures of insecurity (i.e., economic, housing, health), and timely psychiatric services, should be prioritised as part of a national suicide reduction strategy, not only during but after termination of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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