TY - JOUR PY - 2014// TI - Emerging correlations between measures of population well-being, suicide and homicide: A look at global and Australian data JO - Australasian psychiatry A1 - Pridmore, Saxby A1 - Lee, Adrian SP - 112 EP - 117 VL - 22 IS - 2 N2 - OBJECTIVE: Our aim was (1) to examine global and Australian data with a view to determining the presence of an inverse relationship between suicide and homicide rates, and (2) to examine global Human Development Index (HDI) values and suicide and homicide rates, with a view to determining any statistical relationship. METHOD: Suicide and homicide rates and HDI values were available for 102 countries, and suicide and homicide rates were available for the states and territories of Australia. The three data sets had non-normal distributions, and the non-parametric Spearman's ρ was used for correlation statistics with α = 0.05. RESULTS: We found a weak, statistically significant inverse relationship between the suicide and homicide rates of 102 countries (ρ = -0.244, p = 0.014). No relationship was established for the Australian values, however. As anticipated, we found a significant negative correlation between homicide and HDI values. We unexpectedly demonstrated a positive correlation between suicide rates and HDI values. CONCLUSION: The notion that suicide and homicide have an inverse relationship now has some scientific support; but additional research is warranted to characterise and explain this relationship. The unexpected finding of a positive correlation between suicide rates and HDI values requires further examination.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 1039-8562 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1039856213510577 ID - ref1 ER -