ArticleBMC public health2026
Impact of legislation of suicide prevention act on suicide rates in the Republic of Korea: an interrupted time-series analysis.
Article in BMC public health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionSuicide is a global public health problem, and the Republic of Korea has one of the highest suicide rates worldwide. In 2011, the Act on the Prevention of Suicide and the Creation of Culture of Respect for Life (Suicide Prevention Act) was introduced in the Republic of Korea to promote key initiatives for suicide prevention policies. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the Act in reducing suicide rates and identify the differential effects of the legislation by age and region.
methodsWe retrieved the suicide rates by sex, age, region, and district from the Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS). We investigated the impact of the Suicide Prevention Act on suicide rates between 1983 and 2021. We used interrupted time-series (ITS) analysis to assess whether the trends of suicide rates changed following the introduction of the enactment and enforcement of the Suicide Prevention Act.
resultsThe Suicide Prevention Act significantly reduced suicide rates in South Korea. Suicide rates had steadily increased before the Act was introduced, but after enforcement, the trend reversed with decreasing rates in both men (β3=-1.600, P-value < 0.001) and women (β3=-0.097, P-value < 0.001). In this analysis, β2 captures changes in trends before and after the Act, while β3 represents level changes following its enforcement. Age-stratified results showed the legal effectiveness in reducing suicide rates over 30 years old, but there was no change in 20–29 years old and 10–19 years old. The Act’s effectiveness in reducing suicide rates varied regionally, with the law not significantly impacting suicide rates in Ulsan (β2=-0.128, P-value = 0.944, β3=-0.380, P-value = 0.220). At the district level, around 86.2% of the regions demonstrated a positive impact, with most districts having a considerable effect and others showing a slight result on suicide prevention methods.
conclusionEnactment and enforcement of the Suicide Prevention Act helped to reduce suicide rates nationwide, suggesting that legal measures can be essential in implementing an integrated suicide prevention strategy. Further research should verify reasons and contexts in which the effects of suicide prevention regulations and guidelines appeared differently by age and region, as well as the mechanism of how the law could affect health indicators.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.