Predicting Suicide in Nations

ABSTRACT

Theory and research on suicide were used to derive variables for a regression equation to predict the suicide rate in 17 industrialized nations. This regression equation was found to be quite accurate in predicting the relative suicide rates of other European nations (not in the original sample) but not of non-European nations. Blood type was the strongest predictor of national suicide rates.

Keywords:

• national suicide rates
• predicting suicide
• blood types

Notes

¹There are, of course, many other aspects of blood, such as rhesus positive and negative (Daniels, 2002), but these have not been found to correlate with suicide rates. Furthermore, data on their distribution are not available for a large sample of nations.

²Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West Germany. Data on blood type were not available for Switzerland.

³More recent data on the distribution of blood types in nations has not been located by the author. However, the distribution of blood types would not be expected to change dramatically over time.