Suicide trends and climate: insights from 17 years of Spanish data

This study aims to evaluate suicide mortality in Spain using provincial data, while distinguishing between settlements with more than 10,000 inhabitants (cities) and those with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants (towns), in order to analyze the impact of Apparent Temperature and ambient Temperature on suicide deaths. A space-time – stratified case-crossover design was applied to investigate the association between ambient Temperature or Apparent Temperature and suicide mortality using conditional quasi-Poisson regression. Our results show that suicide mortality followed an upward trend in three of the analyzed provinces. Towns have lower suicide mortality rates than cities; however, in several provinces, suicide deaths in cities show an increasing trend. Suicide mortality is higher among men than among women, and the difference in rates by sex is greater in towns. Temperature is associated with suicide mortality, and the fraction of deaths attributable to temperature varies across the provinces studied. Provinces located along the Cantabrian coast have the lowest attributable fraction of deaths. A better understanding of the environmental context in which suicide deaths occur, as well as the methods used to study them and the associated risk factors, is essential for developing comprehensive and effective prevention strategies.