No evidence of increase in suicide in Greece during the first wave of Covid-19.
Open accessAbstract
Background and Objective: Mental health outcomes have reportedly worsened in several countries during the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns. In the present study we examined whether suicides increased in Greece during the first wave of the pandemic. Methods: We used daily suicide estimates from a Suicide Observatory in Greece from 2015-2020 and followed three methodologies: A descriptive approach, an interrupted time series analysis, and a differences-in-differences econometric model. Results: We did not find any empirical evidence of any increase in suicides during the first wave of Covid-19 and the lockdown in any of the three approaches used. Conclusions: Suicides did not seem to increase during the first wave of covid-19 and lockdown in Greece. However, this does not mean that mental health did not deteriorate, or that we will not observe an increase in suicides during the second wave. Protective factors for Greece during the first wave may include working from home (for those able to tele-work), strong family ties, advertising of a suicide hotline and income support for the unemployed.
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Four of the 13 studies published since the search use appropriate time-series modelling approaches to control for underlying trends and report either no change or a fall in suicide deaths in the early months of the pandemic.
“Four of these use appropriate time-series modelling approaches to control for underlying trends ( Leske et al., 2021, Australia; Faust et al., 2020, USA; Vandoros et al., 2020, Greece; Ando et al., 2020, Japan) – these report either no change or a fall in suicide deaths in the early months of the pandemic, although in keeping with Tanaka & Okamoto (2020); Tanaka & Okamoto (2021) and Ueda et al.’s”
From The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-harm and suicidal behaviour: update of living systematic review (2021) · cites this paper as Vandoros et al., 2020
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- Authors
- Vandoros, S., Theodorikakou, O., Katsadoros, K., Zafeiropoulou, D., & Kawachi, I.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Vandoros, Sotiris
- Venue
- medRxiv
- Publisher
- openRxiv
- Published
- 2020-11-16
- OpenAlex
- W3105515940
- Cited by
- 15
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 10
- Type
- posted content
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nd
- Locations
- medRxiv (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Modeling and Simulation › COVID-19 epidemiological studies
- Keywords
- suicide, COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown, mental health, Greece, suicide rates, protective factors, working from home, suicide hotline, family ties
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