Production losses attributable to suicide deaths in European Union

BACKGROUND: Suicide is an important public health problem with multidimensional consequences for societies. One of the under-researched areas of suicide consequences are cross-country analyses of production losses associated with these deaths. The aim of this study was to estimate the production losses (indirect cost) of suicide deaths in 28 European Union states (EU-28) in 2015. METHODS: The study used societal perspective and human capital approach to investigate production losses due to suicide mortality at working age. Eurostat’s data on the number of deaths was used to identify suicide mortality burden in terms of years of potential productive life lost. Labour and economic indicators were applied to proxy the discounted value of potential economic output lost. A one-way deterministic sensitivity analysis was conducted to test the robustness of the estimates. RESULTS: The production losses attributable to suicide deaths in EU-28 in 2015 were €9.07 billion. The per suicide indirect cost of these deaths was €231,088 for the whole EU-28 population; Luxembourg experienced the highest per suicide burden of €649,148. The per capita production losses of suicides in EU-28 was €17.80 and Ireland experienced the highest per capita burden of €48.57. The losses constituted an economic burden of 0.061% of EU-28’s GDP and this share ranged from 0.018% in Cyprus to 0.161% in Latvia. Most of the losses (71–91%) were due to men’s deaths. The results of the sensitivity analysis exhibit a large variation of losses; the highest (lowest) cost was identified with no adjustment for lower employment rates among those dying by suicide (adjustment for minimum productivity) and was 92.3% higher (59.7% lower) on average than in the base scenario. CONCLUSION: Public health actions aimed at prevention of suicides might reduce their health burden but also contribute to the economic welfare of European societies. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11010-5.