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Weather and Suicide: A Decade Analysis in the Five Largest Capital Cities of Colombia

Historically, seasonal variations in suicide rates were thought to be associated with changes in weather. Most of this evidence however, is based on studies that were conducted in developed countries that are located outside the tropics. As such, it is necessary to examine this association in develo...

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Autores principales: Fernández-Niño, Julián Alfredo, Flórez-García, Víctor Alfonso, Astudillo-García, Claudia Iveth, Rodríguez-Villamizar, Laura Andrea
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069433/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29932440
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15071313
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author Fernández-Niño, Julián Alfredo
Flórez-García, Víctor Alfonso
Astudillo-García, Claudia Iveth
Rodríguez-Villamizar, Laura Andrea
author_facet Fernández-Niño, Julián Alfredo
Flórez-García, Víctor Alfonso
Astudillo-García, Claudia Iveth
Rodríguez-Villamizar, Laura Andrea
author_sort Fernández-Niño, Julián Alfredo
collection PubMed
description Historically, seasonal variations in suicide rates were thought to be associated with changes in weather. Most of this evidence however, is based on studies that were conducted in developed countries that are located outside the tropics. As such, it is necessary to examine this association in developing countries, such as Colombia, which do not experience marked seasons. In addition, it is important to adjust for the effect of holidays when analyzing this association as they have been reported to be a relevant confounding factor. Our objective was to estimate the association between daily suicide incidence among men and women in five major Colombian cities (Bogotá, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, and Bucaramanga) and daily temperature and rainfall. For this purpose, we conducted a multi-city, multi-temporal ecological study from 2005 to 2015, using data from the suicide mortality registries (provided by the National Administrative Department of Statistics). Daily measurements of the two weather variables were obtained from the official historical registry of the meteorological station at each city airport. We used these data to estimate conditional Poisson models for daily suicide counts, stratifying by sex and adjusting for holidays. Although we found that none of the weather variable estimators could reject the null hypothesis, we uncovered an association between suicide incidence and long weekends in the total suicide model (Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR): 1.19, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.04–1.23). We found no evidence of association between weather variables and suicide in Colombia. Our study is based on daily observations and it provides evidence of absence of this association in a tropical country that does not experience marked seasons.
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spelling pubmed-60694332018-08-07 Weather and Suicide: A Decade Analysis in the Five Largest Capital Cities of Colombia Fernández-Niño, Julián Alfredo Flórez-García, Víctor Alfonso Astudillo-García, Claudia Iveth Rodríguez-Villamizar, Laura Andrea Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Historically, seasonal variations in suicide rates were thought to be associated with changes in weather. Most of this evidence however, is based on studies that were conducted in developed countries that are located outside the tropics. As such, it is necessary to examine this association in developing countries, such as Colombia, which do not experience marked seasons. In addition, it is important to adjust for the effect of holidays when analyzing this association as they have been reported to be a relevant confounding factor. Our objective was to estimate the association between daily suicide incidence among men and women in five major Colombian cities (Bogotá, Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, and Bucaramanga) and daily temperature and rainfall. For this purpose, we conducted a multi-city, multi-temporal ecological study from 2005 to 2015, using data from the suicide mortality registries (provided by the National Administrative Department of Statistics). Daily measurements of the two weather variables were obtained from the official historical registry of the meteorological station at each city airport. We used these data to estimate conditional Poisson models for daily suicide counts, stratifying by sex and adjusting for holidays. Although we found that none of the weather variable estimators could reject the null hypothesis, we uncovered an association between suicide incidence and long weekends in the total suicide model (Incidence Rate Ratio (IRR): 1.19, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.04–1.23). We found no evidence of association between weather variables and suicide in Colombia. Our study is based on daily observations and it provides evidence of absence of this association in a tropical country that does not experience marked seasons. MDPI 2018-06-22 2018-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6069433/ /pubmed/29932440 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15071313 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Fernández-Niño, Julián Alfredo
Flórez-García, Víctor Alfonso
Astudillo-García, Claudia Iveth
Rodríguez-Villamizar, Laura Andrea
Weather and Suicide: A Decade Analysis in the Five Largest Capital Cities of Colombia
title Weather and Suicide: A Decade Analysis in the Five Largest Capital Cities of Colombia
title_full Weather and Suicide: A Decade Analysis in the Five Largest Capital Cities of Colombia
title_fullStr Weather and Suicide: A Decade Analysis in the Five Largest Capital Cities of Colombia
title_full_unstemmed Weather and Suicide: A Decade Analysis in the Five Largest Capital Cities of Colombia
title_short Weather and Suicide: A Decade Analysis in the Five Largest Capital Cities of Colombia
title_sort weather and suicide: a decade analysis in the five largest capital cities of colombia
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6069433/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29932440
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15071313
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