Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford Street, PO Box 15000, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 4R2.
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z4.
Psychiatry Res. 2021 Jul;301:113998. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2021.113998. Epub 2021 May 13.
COVID-19, and efforts to mitigate its spread, are creating extensive mental health problems. Experts have speculated the mental, economic, behavioral, and psychosocial problems linked to the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to a rise in suicide behavior. However, a quantitative synthesis is needed to reach an overall conclusion regarding the pandemic-suicide link. In the most comprehensive test of the COVID-19-suicidality link to date, we meta-analyzed data from 308,596 participants across 54 studies. Our results suggested increased event rates for suicide ideation (10.81%), suicide attempts (4.68%), and self-harm (9.63%) during the COVID-19 pandemic when considered against event rates from pre-pandemic studies. Moderation analysis indicated younger people, women, and individuals from democratic countries are most susceptible to suicide ideation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Policymakers and helping professionals are advised that suicide behaviors are alarmingly common during the COVID-19 pandemic and vary based upon age, gender, and geopolitics. Strong protections from governments (e.g., implementing best practices in suicide prevention) are urgently needed to reduce suicide behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
新冠疫情及其传播的防控措施造成了广泛的心理健康问题。专家推测，与新冠疫情相关的精神、经济、行为和社会心理问题可能会导致自杀行为的增加。然而，需要进行定量综合分析才能得出关于疫情与自杀之间联系的总体结论。在迄今对新冠疫情与自杀关联性的最全面检验中，我们对来自 54 项研究的 308596 名参与者的数据进行了荟萃分析。我们的研究结果表明，与新冠疫情前的研究相比，在新冠疫情期间，自杀意念（10.81%）、自杀企图（4.68%）和自残（9.63%）的事件发生率增加。调节分析表明，年轻人、女性和来自民主国家的人在新冠疫情期间最容易产生自杀意念。建议政策制定者和救助专业人员注意，在新冠疫情期间自杀行为非常普遍，且因年龄、性别和地缘政治而异。迫切需要各国政府采取强有力的保护措施（例如实施预防自杀的最佳实践），以减少新冠疫情期间的自杀行为。
