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Suicide trends and characteristics in Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Carolina de Mello-Santos ,
José Manoel Bertolote  and
Yuan-Pang Wang
Carolina de Mello-Santos
Affiliation:
Psychiatry Institute of the Universidade de São Paulo School of Medicine, São Paulo, Brazil, email caro_mello@hotmail.com
José Manoel Bertolote
Affiliation:
World Health Organization Team on Management of Mental and Brain Disorders
Yuan-Pang Wang
Affiliation:
Psychiatry Institute of the Universidade de São Paulo School of Medicine, São Paulo, Brazil, email caro_mello@hotmail.com Santo Amaro School of Medicine, UNISA, São Paulo, Brazil
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Brazil is the largest and most populous country in South America (in 2002 the population was approximately 175 million). Although life expectancy in Brazil has increased, suicide and other forms of injury-related mortality, such as homicide and accident, have increased as a proportion of overall mortality (Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, 1984; Brazil Ministry of Health, 2001). The suicide rate in Brazil (3.0–4.0 per 100 000 inhabitants) is not considered high in global terms (World Health Organization, 1999). Nevertheless, it has followed the world tendency towards growth: during 1980–2000, the suicide rate in Brazil increased by 21%. Elderly people present the highest suicide rates in absolute numbers, but the alarming finding in the Brazilian data is that the youth population is increasingly dying by suicide (Mello-Santos et al, 2005). This statistic partially confirms a forecast by Diekstra & Guilbinat (1993) that the number of deaths by suicide would dramatically increase over the next decades, mainly in developing countries, including Latin America. In these regions, socio-economic factors (such as an increase in divorce and unemployment and a decrease in religiosity) increase the risk of self-harm. We discuss the reasons for the low suicide rate in Brazil and highlight the socio-economic factors affecting its increase among the youth population in particular.

Type
Thematic papers - Suicide
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 2006 , pp. 5 - 7
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2006

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