Interaction Domains and Suicide: a Population-Based Panel Study of Suicides in Stockholm, 1991-1999

This article examines how suicides influence suicide risks of others within 2 interaction domains: the family & the workplace. A distinction is made between dyad-based social-interaction effects & degree-based exposure effects. A unique database including all individuals who ever lived in Stockholm during the 1990s is analysed. For about 5.6 years on average, 1.2 million individuals were observed, & 1,116 of them died by suicide. Controlling for other risk factors, men exposed to a suicide in the family (at work) are 8.3 (3.5) times more likely to die by suicide than non-exposed men. The social-interaction effect thus is larger within the family domain, yet work-domain exposure is more important for the suicide rate because individuals are more often exposed to suicides of coworkers than family members. (11 notes, 65 refs.)