Depressive disorders and Suicide

• Main Authors: Su Yu Tsao, 曹書瑜
• Other Authors: K. J. Chen
• Format: Others
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/07898993974438777179

碩士 === 長庚大學 === 醫務管理學研究所 === 97 === Suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death in Taiwan, and its mortality and age-specific mortality rate is still climbing. This study decomposes crude death rate of suicide by compositional analysis, and analyzes the factors that affecting the crude suicide death rate. First of all, we decompose crude suicide death rate into two parts, which are mortality level and age composition. We found that the increase in crude suicide death rate is largely determined by the increasing mortality level. It is known that the presence of a mental disorder is a necessary condition for “successful” suicide. Accordingly, we further decompose the suicide mortality level into two components, which are prevalence rate of depressive disorders, fatality rate of depressive disorders and age composition. It is shown that prevalence of depressive disorders increased during 1996 to 2006, while fatality rate decreased slightly after 2003. The upward trend of prevalence balanced the downward trend of fatality. These opposite effects plus steadily increasing age composition pushed crude suicide rate upward. Moreover, female prevalence of depressive disorders is higher than male, but female fatality rate of depressive disorders is lower than male. This result made male suicide mortality higher than female. Given the fact that both fatality and prevalence of depressive disorders tend to increase with age, crude suicide death rate will continue to climb.