Demographic and Social Correlates of Suicide in the Czech Republic*

In this article the authors review the trends and differentials in mortality from self-inflicted injury and poisoning in the Czech Republic between the early 1970s and the present in terms of their socio-economic and demographic associations. They describe the sources of data on suicide and explore the possible extent of under-reporting of deaths from suicide, and they examine the differences in suicide incidence by age and sex. With the decline in mortality from suicide, the male/female ratio of suicide rates increased from about 2.6 in the early 1970s to around 4.0 in recent years. Suicide rates increase steadily with age, and this pattern did not noticeably change during the period reviewed. The agespecific suicide rates of older men and women declined more than the rates for younger people. As in other societies, married men and women have the lowest suicide rates; in contrast, divorce puts both men and women at the greatest risk of suicide. The authors attempt to investigate the social correlates of suicide by analysing the variation in suicide rates among districts in the Czech Republic and selected socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the district populations. Stepwise regression analysis is used to identify three independent variables that explain 50% of the variation in suicide rates among districts: the abortion ratio, the percentage of locally born population, and the percentage of adults with limited education.