A correlation between increases in suicide rates and increases in male unemployment rates in Mie prefecture, Japan.

The number of suicides in Japan has increased from approximately 22,000 per year in 1988-1997 to over 30,000 per year since then. It has also increased in Mie prefecture during that period. In the present study, we investigated the correlation between annual suicide rates in Mie prefecture, Japan from 1996-2002 and the annual unemployment rate in Japan from 1996-2002 among males. Among the results, annual suicide rates in total correlated with the unemployment rate in Japan, but the relation was not statistically significant: r(7)=0.76, r(2)(7)=0.58, p=0.05 (y=3.54x+6.37); the rates in males, however, correlated significantly with the unemployment rate in Japan: r(7)=0.85, r(2)(7)=0.73, p=0.01 (y=5.72x+4.49). In addition, we found that annual suicide rates in total correlated significantly with the male unemployment rates. When a patient is unemployed and in a bad situation, the medical staff and the family should be aware of the correspondence between suicide rates and unemployment.