Comments on: ''Socio-economic factors and suicide rates in European Union countries'

摘要

Sir,We read with interest the elegant study by Ferretti and Coluccia entitled "Socio-economic factors and suicide rates in European Union countries" providing an accurate analysis of the 2004-2005 Eurostat database by exploring 37 socio-economic variables (including the clinical of "history of alcohol abuse"), classified in seven ecological dimensions: population, education, health, living condition and welfare, labor market, economy and environment in order to assess the inequalities of suicides rates across different European countries [1]. Upon discriminant analysis, the authors found five explanatory variables related to four different ecological dimensions: education, health, living condition and welfare and economy. Two discriminant functions emerged, suggesting that worse "economic factors" predicted higher risk of suicide in contrast to the "social factor".