Recession time saw 10k more suicides: Study

A study has shown that at least 10,000 more Americans and Europeans took their own lives from 2007 to 2010, appearing to be attributing health hazards to economic doldrums.

The suicide rate was compared to the one during the good economic times of the previous few years.

Aaron Reeves, a sociologist and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford in England, who helped lead the research, said, “It’s a fairly large and substantial increase over what we would have expected.”

“There are, broadly speaking, large mental health implications of the economic crisis that are still being felt by many people.”

Nullifying the results of the research, however, were figures from Sweden and Austria, where the suicide rate did not change during the economic hardship.

David Stuckler, a professor and health economist at Oxford and the paper’s senior author, said, “These economic suicides are avoidable.”

Abdulrahman El-Sayed, a doctor and assistant professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City, said, “The social welfare aspects of economic downturns like this can’t be ignored,” El-Sayed said. “When our economic belts get a little too tight, we shouldn’t be cutting things that help the average Joe.”