Li Zixu, Cai Ziyi, Yip Paul S F
Department of Social Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Population Health Sciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, United Kingdom.
SSM Popul Health. 2023 Mar 2;22:101376. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101376. eCollection 2023 Jun.
Suicide and homicide have long been viewed in Western culture as moral, ethical and legal equivalents. This view has underpinned many theoretical and empirical explorations into their relationship over the centuries. However, there has been little evaluation of longitudinal heterogeneity.
Suicide and homicide rates in 183 countries between 2000 and 2019 were collected from the World Health Organization Global Health Observatory Repository. Corresponding structural variables (i.e., GDP per capita, unemployment rate, percentage of urban population, percentage of elderly population, and Gini index) were acquired from The World Bank and Standardized World Income Inequality Database. Parallel-process latent class growth modelling was applied to identify different classes within the joint suicide and homicide rate trajectories. Multinomial logistic regression examined relationships between the structural covariates and trajectory classes.
Four trajectory classes were identified, two with inverse relationships between suicide and homicide, and two with parallel relationships: 1) countries with increasing suicide rates and decreasing homicide rates ("suicide up, homicide down": UD, 41) or 2) countries with decreasing suicide rates and increasing homicide rates ("suicide down, homicide up": DU, = 17); and 3) countries where suicide and homicide rates both trended up (UU, = 19), or 4) both trended down (DD, = 106). A higher average annual growth rate (AAGR) of GDP per capita was related to an increased possibility of being in DD than in DU. Countries with higher AAGR in unemployment rates were more likely to be in UD and UU than in DD, while those with higher AAGR in urbanization were less likely to be in UD than in DD.
The over-time relationship between suicide and homicide is heterogenous and complex. It is influenced differently by GDP per capita, urbanization and unemployment in different countries, and it is not well described by a single theory.
在西方文化中，自杀和杀人长期以来在道德、伦理和法律层面被视为等同。几个世纪以来，这种观点一直支撑着许多关于它们之间关系的理论和实证探索。然而，对纵向异质性的评估却很少。
从世界卫生组织全球卫生观测站数据库收集了2000年至2019年期间183个国家的自杀率和杀人率。相应的结构变量（即人均国内生产总值、失业率、城市人口百分比、老年人口百分比和基尼系数）从世界银行和标准化世界收入不平等数据库中获取。采用并行过程潜在类别增长模型来识别自杀率和杀人率联合轨迹中的不同类别。多项逻辑回归分析了结构协变量与轨迹类别的关系。
确定了四种轨迹类别，其中两种自杀率和杀人率呈反比关系，两种呈平行关系：1）自杀率上升而杀人率下降的国家（“自杀上升，杀人下降”：UD，n = 41）或2）自杀率下降而杀人率上升的国家（“自杀下降，杀人上升”：DU，n = 17）；以及3）自杀率和杀人率均呈上升趋势的国家（UU，n = 19），或4）两者均呈下降趋势的国家（DD，n = 106）。人均国内生产总值的较高年均增长率与处于DD类别而非DU类别的可能性增加有关。失业率年均增长率较高的国家比处于DD类别的国家更有可能处于UD和UU类别，而城市化年均增长率较高的国家比处于DD类别的国家更不可能处于UD类别。
自杀和杀人之间的长期关系是异质且复杂的。不同国家的人均国内生产总值、城市化和失业率对其影响各异，单一理论无法很好地描述这种关系。
