Friday 29 February 2008

Marriage and Suicide


In a report published yesterday, the Office for National Statistics shows that married people have a substantially lower risk of suicide than non-marrieds.

The key findings of the report are (emphasis mine):

  • People who are married still have a substantially lower risk of
    suicide than those who are not, despite changes in marriage
    patterns over the last 25 years.

  • Despite an overall reduction in suicide rates, there has been no
    narrowing of the gap in suicide rates between those who are
    married and those who are single or divorced. Rates for single
    and divorced men and divorced women were around three times
    higher
    than for married men and women throughout. For single
    women, the differential widened from just over two times to
    around three times between 1983 and 2004

  • There was a small decrease in the differential between single and
    married men aged 25 to 44. Suicide rates were three times higher
    for single men in 1984 but two and a half times higher in 2004

  • Among men aged 45 and over, the gap in suicide rates between
    widowed and married men fell from just over four times to around
    three times between 1983 and 2004. For widowed women, the
    differential was around two and a half times throughout

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