Suicide among immigrants in Germany.

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  • Additional Information
    • Source:
      Publisher: Elsevier/North-Holland Biomedical Press Country of Publication: Netherlands NLM ID: 7906073 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1573-2517 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 01650327 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Affect Disord Subsets: MEDLINE
    • Publication Information:
      Original Publication: Amsterdam, Elsevier/North-Holland Biomedical Press.
    • Subject Terms:
      Emigrants and Immigrants* ; Suicide*; Adolescent ; Germany/epidemiology ; Greece ; Humans ; Russia
    • Abstract:
      Aims: The identification of high-risk groups is crucial in public health suicide prevention approaches. This study aims to compare suicide risks of Germans with nine of the largest immigrant populations living in Germany.
      Methods: Based on a German national database of mortality statistics, the number of suicides in Germans and immigrants was available for the study period (2000 - 2017), stratified for gender and age groups. Standard mortality ratios (SMR) for suicide were computed since age distributions differed between populations. Moreover, SMR of immigrant populations were correlated with potential risk and resilience factors.
      Results: The analysed dataset covers a period of 18 years, which translates to over 1.47 billion life years (LY) and 206,056 recorded suicides. 134,971,779 LY (10.1%) and 8,936 (4.3%) suicides were assigned to non-German citizens. SMR, calculated for nine of the largest immigrant populations, were lower compared with the German reference population ranging from 0.24 (Greek nationality) to 0.86 (Russian nationality). SMR in immigrants was highest in adolescents and declined with age. SMR was associated with country of origin (CO) suicide rates as well as with socio-economic factors of immigrant groups in Germany. With the global financial crisis, suicide risk of immigrants from the most affected countries decreased more strongly compared to immigrants from other CO.
      Conclusions: The suicide risk strongly differs between the individual immigrant groups and is associated with risk factors of the respective CO. Therefore, future suicide prevention approaches in immigrants should take CO-specific vulnerabilities into account as well as age-related risk factors.
      Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interests All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
      (Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.)
    • Contributed Indexing:
      Keywords: Germany; immigration; prevention; risk factors; suicide
    • Publication Date:
      Date Created: 20200716 Date Completed: 20210215 Latest Revision: 20210215
    • Publication Date:
      20231215
    • Accession Number:
      10.1016/j.jad.2020.05.038
    • Accession Number:
      32663973