Japan’s National Police Agency releases monthly data on suicides on a timely basis. Other countries are more reticent. The latest US data, for example, is 2018. Japanese suicides rose 3.7% in 2020, up by 750 people to 20,919. This was the first increase in 11 years.
How to interpret the data?
The Covid-19 pandemic and the associated government policy responses are an easy explanation.
The pandemic/policy responses have caused:
- An increase in unemployment, financial insecurity
- A deterioration in mental wellness resiliency due to social isolation, fear of infection, potential stigma, and victimization
- Stay-at-home lockdowns, confinement, heightened risks of domestic violence, child neglect/abuse
- Mental health services’ access problems
- Increased bereavement, intensified by separation issues
The above is in addition to 6) the exacerbation of already present mental illness, such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc.
However, the above just changes the question to:
What is the relative importance of the factors?
Has the pick-up in suicides been more, or less, than experts in the field expected?
To address these questions a model is needed. This is discussed and presented in our 8-page PDF article, link at the end, below.
Conclusions
Reflecting how employment, one’s company, remains at the core of identity in Japan, suicides are relatively sensitive to economic factors (proxied by the unemployment rate) even when modified for additional material factors.
Based on this modified unemployment rate model, the increase in the number of suicides in 2020 could have been over 1,000, rather than the 750 recorded.
Japanese unemployment peaked at 3.1% in October 2020 and had fallen to 2.9% in December.
To expect suicides in Japan to fall year-overt-year in 2021, we must hope for the 2021 annual unemployment rate to be below the 2.8% rate of 2020.
The full 8-page PDF article is here:
https://wellnessasianopportunities.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Suicides-and-Covid-19-M.pdf