Occupation and Suicide

Objective. Research on occupation and suicide has neglected multivariate models. It is not clear, for example, if persons in alleged “high-risk” occupations have high suicide risk because of occupational stress associated with the occupation or because of the demographic composition of the people in the occupation. The present study explores the relationship between occupation and suicide for 32 occupational groups. Methods. Data are from the national mortality file tapes, which cover 21 states. They refer to 9,499 suicides and 134,386 deaths from all other causes in 1990. Results. Bivariate logistic regression models find a total of 15 occupations with either significantly higher (e.g., dentists, artists, machinists, auto mechanics, and carpenters) or lower (e.g., clerks, elementary school teachers, cooks) risk than the rest of the working-age population. Multivariate models that remove the demographic covariates of occupation find only eight occupations with greater or lower than expected risk of death by suicide. Conclusion. The results underscore the need for demographic controls in the assessment of occupational risk of suicide. They are consistent with a previous study based on data from England. The findings provide the first systematic evidence on the problem for the United States.