Suicide Attempts in Ilam Province, Western Iran, 2010-2014: A Time Trend Study

Suicide has become an increasingly widespread form of morbidity in the developing countries. There has been an increasing trend in morbidity and mortality due to suicide in Iran over the past few decades. This study surveyed attempts and completed suicide over a 5-year period.

Through a cross-sectional study, overall identified suicides by systematic registration suicide data (SRSD) in Ilam Province, western Iran from 21 March 2010 to 11 December 2014 were enrolled. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used for measuring the association between the risk factors of interest and suicide. The statistical software package was Stata 11.2.

A Suicide attempts have slightly increased in Ilam during 2010-2014, during which, 6,818 attempted suicides occurred of which 546 were completed. The odds of completed suicide was higher among older age groups than younger ones so that the crude OR estimates of completed suicide among people aged 50 to 59 yr against people aged <20 yr was (OR=6.99; 95% CI: 3.02, 11.07). The crude and adjusted odds ratio (OR) estimates of completed suicide in males against females were (OR=3.22; 95% CI: 2.58, 3.93) and (OR=3.66; 95% CI: 3.03, 4.11), respectively. Significant excess risk also appeared with academic against illiterate attempters (OR=2.31; 95% CI: 1.35, 3.95). Results showed no increasing trend in the suicide method. Some methods such as self-immolation had decreasing trend over time, although it was not statistically significant (P=0.089).

We observed the variety of suicide risk factors that calls for more diversity in preventative programs. Distribution of suicide methods is diverse across the period of the study.