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Smoking and the risk of suicide
A Tanskanen1, J Tuomilehto, H Viinamäki
1Department of Psychiatry, Kuopio University Hospital, Finland.
Objective:
To estimate the relationship between cigarette smoking and the risk of suicide.
Method:
The mortality of 36527 adult men and women was monitored for the mean 14.4 years. Information on deaths caused by suicide was obtained from the National Mortality Register. Suicides were subclassified by the level of violence used. Current smokers of 1-20 cigarettes per day were considered light/moderate smokers and heavy smokers were defined as those smoking > or =21 cigarettes per day.
Results:
There were 134 suicides among 17798 men and 31 suicides among 18729 women. The most common suicide methods were hanging, firearms and drug overdose. According to the Cox model the adjusted relative risk of both violent and non-violent suicide was significantly and linearly increased among light/moderate and heavy smokers compared with non-smokers.
Conclusion:
Smoking was associated with an increased risk of suicide irrespective of the level of violence used.