TY - JOUR
TI - Characteristics of immigrant suicide completers in a sample of suicide
victims from Greece
AU - Paraschakis, Antonios
AU - Michopoulos, Ioannis
AU - Christodoulou,
AU - Christos
AU - Koutsaftis, Filippos
AU - Lykouras, Lefteris
AU - Douzenis,
AU - Athanassios
JO - International Journal of Social Psychiatry
PY - 2014
VL - 60
TODO - 5
SP - 462-467
PB - SAGE Publications Ltd
SN - 0020-7640, 1741-2854
TODO - 10.1177/0020764013496081
TODO - Immigrants; suicide victims; suicide completers; Greece
TODO - Background: Immigrants have higher rates of suicidal behaviour in
comparison to the indigenous population.
Aims: To describe the characteristics of foreign nationality suicide
completers and search for differences between them and native Greeks.
This is the first study focused on immigrant suicide victims in Greece.
Methods: Data were collected for all recorded cases of completed suicide
for the two-year period November 2007 to October 2009 at the Athens
Department of Forensic Medicine, the largest, by far, of its kind in
Greece covering approximately 35% of the country’s population. The
material was collected using the method of psychological autopsy as well
as from the victims’ forensic records.
Results: Nearly 10% of Greece’s 11 million population are of foreign
nationality. Approximately half of them live in Athens and its suburbs,
an area where 35% of Greece’s population lives. In our sample, 15.8%
of the suicide victims were of foreign nationality (53 cases): 41 men
(77.4%) and 12 women (22.6%). Higher suicide rates were found for
citizens of Kuwaiti (9.1%), Somali (6.7%) and Afghan (0.9%)
nationality (immigrant communities with very few members); the lower
suicide rates were for individuals of Egyptian (0.01%), Ukrainian
(0.01%) and Albanian (0.006%) nationality (the Albanian immigrant
community is the largest in Greece). In comparison to their Greek
counterparts, immigrant victims were younger (mean age 38.7 vs 54.9
years, p < .001) more often unemployed (p = .007) and with a history of
alcohol abuse (p < .001). The main suicide method used by immigrants was
hanging (p <.001) while for Greeks it was jumping from a height.
Conclusions: Individuals who belong to small national communities seem
to have the highest risk of dying by suicide. Immigrant suicide victims
differ from the indigenous population in several parameters. Our data
could help define the most vulnerable of them and apply more effective
suicide prevention strategies.
ER -