Assessing the Quantitative Impact of Suicide on Life Expectancy in Hong Kong: 1986–2006

Abstract

It is important to have a more complete understanding of the social and economic burden associated with suicide mortality. Apart from the usual year of life lost (YLL), we propose an alternative method, a life table approach to assess the impact of suicide and compare with the YLL approach from 1986 to 2006 in Hong Kong. The life-table approach is to assess the impact at a population level. It shows that the impact of suicides increased from 0.52% (0.30 years) to 0.62% (0.38 years) of life span for males aged 18 while the same figure for females kept at 0.4% (0.30 years) of lifespan over the period. A comparison with the YLL and some discussion are also given.

Keywords:

• burden of disease
• cause-elimination life table
• impact assessment
• suicide
• year of life lost

The authors would like to thank the two reviewers and the editor for their valuable comments and suggestions on this article.

Notes

Note: Rate—number of suicide per 100,000; (%)—proportion of deaths among all deaths for the respective age groups.