Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorLaw, Chi-kin
dc.contributor.authorLeung, Candi MC
dc.date.accessioned2017-05-03T15:04:35Z
dc.date.available2017-05-03T15:04:35Z
dc.date.issued2012
dc.date.modified2013-06-06T00:04:15Z
dc.identifier.issn1471-2458
dc.identifier.doi10.1186/1471-2458-12-505
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10072/50826
dc.description.abstractBackground: Charcoal burning in a sealed room has recently emerged as the second most common suicide means in Hong Kong, causing approximately 200 deaths each year. As charcoal burning suicide victims have a unique sociodemographic profile (i.e., predominantly economically active men), they may commit suicide at specific times. However, little is known about the temporal patterns of charcoal burning suicides. Methods: Suicide data from 2001 to 2008 on victims of usual working age (20-59) were obtained from the registered death files of the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong. A total of 1649 cases of charcoal burning suicide were analyzed using a two-step procedure, which first examined the temporal asymmetries in the incidence of suicide, and second investigated whether these asymmetries were influenced by sex and/or economic activity status. Poisson regression analyses were employed to model the monthly and daily patterns of suicide by economic activity status and sex. Results: Our findings revealed pronounced monthly and daily temporal variations in the pattern of charcoal burning suicides in Hong Kong. Consistent with previous findings on overall suicide deaths, there was an overall spring peak in April, and Monday was the common high risk day for all groups. Although sex determined the pattern of variation in charcoal burning suicides, the magnitude of the variation was influenced by the economic activity status of the victims. Conclusion: The traditional classification of suicide methods as either violent or nonviolent tends to elide the temporal variations of specific methods. The interaction between sex and economic activity status observed in the present study indicates that sex should be taken into consideration when investigating the influence of economic activity status on temporal variations of suicide. This finding also suggests that suicide prevention efforts should be both time- and subgroup-specific.
dc.description.peerreviewedYes
dc.description.publicationstatusYes
dc.format.extent162024 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherBioMed Central Ltd.
dc.publisher.placeUnited Kingdom
dc.relation.ispartofstudentpublicationN
dc.relation.ispartofpagefrom1
dc.relation.ispartofpageto7
dc.relation.ispartofjournalBMC Public Health
dc.relation.ispartofvolume505
dc.rights.retentionY
dc.subject.fieldofresearchEpidemiology not elsewhere classified
dc.subject.fieldofresearchcode420299
dc.titleTemporal patterns of charcoal burning suicides among the working age population in Hong Kong SAR: the influence of economic activity status and sex
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.descriptionC1 - Articles
dc.type.codeC - Journal Articles
dcterms.licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0
gro.facultyGriffith Health, Australian Institute for Suicide Research & Prevention
gro.description.notepublicPage numbers are not for citation purposes. Instead, this article has the unique article number of 505.
gro.rights.copyright© 2012 Law et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
gro.date.issued2012
gro.hasfulltextFull Text
gro.griffith.authorLaw, Chi Kin


Files in this item

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

  • Journal articles
    Contains articles published by Griffith authors in scholarly journals.

Show simple item record