Climate change but not unemployment explains the changing suicidality in Thessaloniki Greece (2000-2012)

Abstract

Introduction: Recently there was a debate concerning the etiology behind attempts and completed suicides. The aim of the current study was to search for possible correlations between the rates of attempted and completed suicide and climate variables and regional unemployment per year in the county of Thessaloniki, Macedonia, northern Greece, for the years 2000-12.

Material and methods: The regional rates of suicide and attempted suicide as well as regional unemployment were available from previous publications of the authors. The climate variables were calculated from the daily E-OBS gridded dataset which is based on observational data

Results: Only the male suicide rates correlate significantly with high mean annual temperature but not with unemployment. The multiple linear regression analysis results suggest that temperature is the only variable that determines male suicides and explains 51% of their variance. Unemployment fails to contribute significantly to the model. There seems to be a seasonal distribution for attempts with mean rates being higher for the period from May to October and the rates clearly correlate with temperature. The highest mean rates were observed during May and August and the lowest during December and February. Multiple linear regression analysis suggests that temperature also determines the female attempts rate although the explained variable is significant but very low (3-5%)

Conclusion: Climate variables and specifically high temperature correlate both with suicide and attempted suicide rates but with a different way between males and females. The climate effect was stronger than the effect of unemployment.

Keywords: Climate; Greece; Suicide; Suicide attempts.