The city where a person lives can influence his or her risk of dying by suicide, according to a new study.
Published in Social Science Quarterly, the study finds that adults living in cities with more socio-economic disadvantages and fewer families living together have higher odds of suicidal death than adults living in less-disadvantaged cities and cities with more families living together.
The findings support classic sociological arguments that the risk of suicide is indeed influenced by the social climate and cannot simply be explained by the sum of individual characteristics, researchers say.
“Many people see suicide as an inherently individual act,” says Justin Denney, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and director of the Urban Health Program, part of Rice’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. “However, our research suggests that it is an act that can be heavily influenced by broader socio-economic and family factors.”
