Madrid (EFE).- The pandemic has accelerated the number of suicides in Spain to 5.5% in three years, especially middle-aged people and residents of large cities and provincial capitals, but above all migrants, a in which the increase is close to 25% compared to 6.5% of those born in Spain.
The report “Evolution of suicide in Spain in this millennium (2000-2021)”, carried out by researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), the Mental Health Network Biomedical Research Center (Cibersam) and the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona , warns that the number of suicides in Spain “is getting dangerously close to the world average set by the WHO”.
«The news is not good: suicide, far from decreasing, as is desirable and we have made a lot of efforts, is increasing. It was doing it before the pandemic, and afterward it is doing it in a very significant way”, summarized José Luis Ayuso, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Research and Training in Mental Health Services at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
2018, the turning point
Specifically, the upward trend began to manifest itself in 2018; Since then and until 2021, global growth has been 6.4%, and it has occurred in both men and women born in Spain or in another country, according to the data presented by Alejandro de la Torre, the study’s principal investigator. of the Center for Biomedical Research in the Mental Health Network.
By gender, the annual increase in men has been 6.7% between 2018-2021 (3.7% between 2019-2021); in the case of women it has been 6.5% for the first period and 5.3% in the second, which shows a more uniform growth in men throughout the years of the pandemic and more pronounced in women in 2020 .
Depending on the country of origin, the annual increase reaches 6.5% in the 2018-2021 triennium for people born in Spain, but 24.3% in the migrant population, which is undoubtedly “the social group most affected by the pandemic”.
More suicides in men and between 40 and 64 years
The last fixed photo of suicide in Spain is from 2021, when, according to official INE data on which this study is based, 4,003 people took their lives. eleven a day
Thus, the mortality rate from this cause rose to 8.45 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, a figure that is already close to the world average of 9 established by the WHO and which brings Spain closer to the countries with the highest figures, such as the United States. United States, Canada or the Scandinavian countries.
Three out of four people who committed suicide were men (2,982); Half (2,016) of the deceased were between 40-64 years old, a range with which the pandemic also hit the most, since the growth of suicides at these ages has been 7.7%.
“We speculate that the measures to control the spread of the virus (eg, closure of services at the beginning of the pandemic, social distancing measures, drifting economic difficulties, etc.) could be behind this effect,” the authors point out.
Of the rest, 31% were over 65, 13.8% between 25 and 39 years of age, and 5% between 10 and 24 years of age. The vast majority, 87% (3,490) were born in Spain and the rest (12.7%) in other countries.
In the big cities, except Madrid
A third (32%) of those who died in 2021 lived in provincial capitals, and almost a quarter in rural areas (municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants) or urban municipalities with between 10,001-50,000 inhabitants (24.6% and 24.7%, respectively). .
The rest resided in large cities (but not provincial capitals) with more than 50,000 inhabitants.
The greatest increases with the pandemic have occurred precisely in residents of large cities and provincial capitals, specifically 10.9% and 6%.
This being the case, how is it possible that provinces such as Madrid have the second lowest rate, after Guadalajara (4.52 and 5.3/100,000 inhabitants, respectively), when other more depopulated ones such as Lugo (15.6%) or Zamora (14.2%) do they have the highest?
The researchers have cited several reasons, one of them being that Madrid has a higher percentage of young people who are not at risk.
The level of restrictions also falls within “speculation” because, according to De la Torre, it has been noticed that “the tougher they have been, the higher the rates, but proving it is very difficult.”
The increase in cases occurred in every month of the year, except January and August; but that year he repeated the same pattern as the previous ones, and it is “a clear increase in mortality from suicide in the summer months”: only in July 2021, more than 400 deaths were exceeded.
This seasonal effect is not exclusive to suicide, but also occurs in other “relatively similar processes and behaviors” and especially those of a violent nature, which are exacerbated by heat.
expectations are not good
Given this panorama, the experts predict that “expectations are not at all promising” and this is what the first provisional data from the INE for the first semester of 2022 invites us to think about, according to which suicide remained the leading external cause of death, with 2,015 deaths, 5.1% more than in the same period of the previous year.
“Each and every one of these deaths could have been prevented,” criticized Víctor Pérez, director of the Institute of Neuropsychiatry and Addictions at Hospital del Mar (INAD) and professor of Psychiatry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
And not only deaths: “deep suffering” could also have been avoided in the environment of the deceased, between 15 and 20 people on average.
The experts also ask not to forget that one in five people who try to commit suicide and fail will try again, so significant measures are urgently needed to mitigate this problem. “Talking about suicide does not kill, what kills is ignoring it,” Pérez concluded.
The data by provinces
Up to 26 of the 52 provinces and autonomous cities exceed the world average for suicide mortality, and Galicia, Andalusia, Castilla y León and Aragón are those with the highest rates in all of Spain, although in Melilla, Lérida, Palencia , Zamora and Navarra is where it has increased the most since the start of the pandemic.
Lugo is the one with the highest rate, 15.6, followed by Zamora (14.2) and Jaén (13.1); A Coruña and Asturias both presented 12.93; Soria (12.30); Basin (12.06); Las Palmas (11.81); Malaga (11.67); Cordoba (11.65); Palencia (11.35); Huesca (11.29); Teruel (11.25); Pontevedra (11.24); Granada (11.20); Burgos (11); Castellon (10.57); Ourense (10.49); Girona; (10.47); Leon (10.11); Avila (10.05).
If the increase is considered, between 2020 and 2021 the most significant increases occurred in Melilla (29.1%), Lérida (26.1%), Palencia (22.5%), Zamora (22.5%) and Navarra (16.8%). On the contrary, in another 22 they decreased, where more in Segovia (25.8% less); Biscay (13.7%); Guadalajara (13.4%) and Ávila (12.7%).