Symposia
Suicide and Self-Injury
Sherry H. Stewart, Ph.D.
Professor
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Justin Dubé, PhD Candidate
Graduate Student
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Simon Sherry, PhD
Professor
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience; Department of Psychiatry; Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Martin Smith, PhD
Graduate Student
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Paul Hewitt, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada
COVID-19, and efforts to mitigate its spread, have created extensive mental health problems. Experts have speculated the mental, economic, behavioral, and psychosocial problems linked to the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to a rise in suicide behavior. However, a quantitative synthesis is needed to reach an overall conclusion regarding the pandemic-suicide link. In this presentation, we review the most comprehensive test of the COVID-19-suicidality link to date, where we meta-analyzed data from 308,596 participants across 54 studies, representing data from more than 18 countries. Most samples (n = 26; 41.9%) were from countries with “flawed” democratic political regimes, 18 samples (29.0%) were from countries with “authoritarian” regimes, 13 samples (21.0%) were from “full democratic” regimes, and four samples (6.5%) were from counties with “hybrid” regimes. Our results suggested increased event rates for suicide ideation (10.81%), suicide attempts (4.68%), and self-harm (9.63%) during the COVID-19 pandemic when considered against event rates from pre-pandemic studies. Moderation analysis indicated younger people, women, and individuals from democratic countries are most susceptible to suicide ideation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Policymakers and helping professionals are advised that suicide behaviors are alarmingly common during the COVID-19 pandemic and vary based upon age, gender, and geopolitics. Strong protections from governments (e.g., implementing best practices in suicide prevention) are urgently needed to reduce suicide behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.