Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Sep 28;8(9):e023144.
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-023144.

Changing trends in suicide rates in South Korea from 1993 to 2016: a descriptive study

Sang-Uk Lee  1   2 , Jong-Ik Park  3 , Soojung Lee  4 , In-Hwan Oh  2 , Joong-Myung Choi  2 , Chang-Mo Oh  2
Affiliations

Changing trends in suicide rates in South Korea from 1993 to 2016: a descriptive study

Sang-Uk Lee et al. BMJ Open. .

Abstract

Objectives: The South Korean government has recently implemented policies to prevent suicide. However, there were few studies examining the recent changing trends in suicide rates. This study aims to examine the changing trends in suicide rates by time and age group.

Design: A descriptive study using nationwide mortality rates.

Setting: Data on the nationwide cause of death from 1993 to 2016 were obtained from Statistics Korea.

Participants: People living in South Korea.

Interventions: Implementation of national suicide prevention policies (first: year 2004, second: year 2009).

Primary outcome measures: Suicide was defined as 'X60-X84' code according to the ICD-10 code. Age-standardised suicide rates were estimated, and a Joinpoint regression model was applied to describe the trends in suicide rate.

Results: From 2010 to 2016, the suicide rates in South Korea have been decreasing by 5.5% (95% CI -10.3% to -0.5%) annually. In terms of sex, the suicide rate for men had increased by 5.0% (95% CI 3.6% to 6.4%) annually from 1993 to 2010. However, there has been no statistically significant change from 2010 to 2016. For women, the suicide rate had increased by 7.5% (95% CI 6.3% to 8.7%) annually from 1993 to 2009, but since 2009, the suicide rate has been significantly decreasing by 6.1% (95% CI -9.1% to -3.0%) annually until 2016. In terms of the age group, the suicide rates among women of almost all age groups have been decreasing since 2010; however, the suicide rates of men aged between 30 and 49 years showed continuously increasing trends.

Conclusion: Our results showed that there were differences in the changing trends in suicide rate by sex and age groups. Our finding suggests that there was a possible relationship between implementation of second national suicide prevention policies and a decline in suicide rate.

Keywords: Republic Of Korea; mortality; prevention; social and political issues.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Trends in age-standardised suicide rates in South Korea, 1993–2016. APC, annual percentage change The age-standardised suicide rates are presented as suicide death cases per 100 000 people using the Korean midyear population in 2005 as the standard population. Joinpoint regression analysis was used to determine whether there were significant changes in trends in age-standardised suicide rates for the period between 1993 and 2016. *p<0.05.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Implementation of the National Suicide Prevention Programme and Plan. The age-standardised suicide rates are presented as a connected line from 1993 to 2016 are presented as a connected line. Each number represents the year in which the major events related to the National Suicide Prevention programme or Plan occurred.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organisation. Suicide data. http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide (accessed on 14 Sep 2017).
    1. World Health Organisation. Mental health action plan 2013−2020. http://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/action_plan/en/ (accessed on 14 Sep 2017).
    1. Hendin H, Phillips MR, Vijayakumar L, et al. Suicide and suicide prevention in Asia. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2018.
    1. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD health data 2016. https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/suicide-rates.htm (accessed 14 Sep 2017).
    1. Statistics Korea. Cause-of-death statistics 2017. http://kosis.kr/en (accessed 14 Sep 2017).

Publication types