Study Says: Rising Temperatures Linked to Increase in Suicides

According to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday, scientist has found a link between rising global climate temperatures and an increase in suicide rates where it says that the change could have a major effect on a person’s mental health.
Researchers at Stanford University, in California, compared decades of data on temperatures and suicide rates in the US and Mexico, and found a “strong correlation between warm weather and increased suicides”.
“Hotter temperatures are clearly not the only, nor the most important, risk factor for suicide,” said lead author Marshall Burke, an economist at Stanford University in a statement. “But our findings suggest that warming can have a surprisingly large impact on suicide risk, and this matters for both our understanding of mental health as well as for what we should expect as temperatures continue to warm.”
The study across the U.S. and Mexico in recent decades found that the rate of suicide rose by 0.7 percent in the U.S. and by 2.1 percent in Mexico when the average monthly temperature rose by 1C.
The analysis was done at county level and took into account seasonal variation, levels of poverty and even the news of celebrity suicides that can lead to more deaths.
This kind of study cannot prove a causal link between rising temperature and more suicides. But the results show “remarkable consistency” over time and in many different places, according to the scientists which also linked climate change to 60,000 suicides in India in the last three decades.
“The large magnitude of our results adds further impetus to better understand why temperature affects suicide and to implement policies to mitigate future temperature rise,” reads the study.
> Shatabdi Sarker Poushi