Global financial crissis raises Europe's suicide rates

Suicides rates in Europe surged in 2007 to 2009 due to the financial crisis which drove unemployment up and shunk incomes. Countries like Greece and Ireland were the first hit seeing the most dramatic increases, according to researchers.

However the rates of road deaths in the region were down in the same period, as higher numbers of jobless people led to lower car use, according to an initial analysis of data from 10 EU countries.

According to sociologist David Stuckler from Britain's Cambridge University who worked on the analysis, even though signs were visible of a financial recovery, what is now clear is that the downturn triggered a human crisis that led to severe personal consequences.

Stuckler, Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Sanjay Basu of the University of California San Francisco published their initial analysis in the Lancet journal and said the data revealed the rapidity of the health consequences of financial crises.

Among the 10 countries studied -- Austria, Britain, Finland, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia and Romania -- only Austria had fewer suicides in 2009 than in 2007, with the rate down 5 percent. In all of the other countries, the increase was at least 5 percent.

In Britain suicide rates rose from a recent low of 6.14 per 100,000 people aged under 65 in 2007, to 6.75 in 2008 -- an increase of 10 percent, and remained similarly high in 2009.