Cluster Suicides Among Unemployed Persons in Australia Over the Period 2001-2013

Abstract

There has been no research on whether particularly vulnerable people such as the unemployed are prone to being in a suicide cluster (defined as an unusually high number of suicides occurring in a defined geographical area and/or over a relatively brief period of time). We investigated the presence of unemployed suicide clusters in Australia over the period 2001–2013 using a Poisson discrete scan statistic approach. Spatial, temporal and spatial/temporal clusters comprised 13.4, 4.4 and 1.7% of all unemployed suicides respectively. These results suggest the importance of targeting preventative efforts in where large numbers of unemployed persons who have died by suicide resided before death.