Associations between ambient high temperatures and suicide mortality: a multi-city time-series study in China

Suicide prevention has become a public health issue of great concern. Previous studies proved that ambient temperature had an impact on suicide death, but few studies focus on regional studies in large cities. We aimed to estimate the association between ambient temperature and suicide in 31 capital cities in China during 2008~2013. Distributed lag non-linear model was used to explore the relationship between ambient temperature and suicide, adjusting for long-term trend, seasonality, and humidity confounders. Multivariate meta-analysis was used to pool the city-specific estimates to explore the overall relative risk in China. High temperature had a significant impact on suicide death. The country-level relative risk of high temperature on suicide was 1.37 (95% CI, 0.96~2.57), and the RR was higher in male and age < 65-year-old group than that in female and age ≥ 65-year-old group. There has no consistent pattern of associations in city-level with sex and age. The high temperature has a greater impact on suicide in south region compared with north region. We found the positive association between ambient temperature and suicide in China.