P-623 - Completed Suicide and Education Achievement: a Nationwide Register Study

Abstract

Objective:

In the complexity of suicide, qualification, that is, the education attainment the individual reached, has been only marginally investigated. the aim of this naturalistic study was to document the role of education achievement in completed suicides in the Italian population.

Method:

Data were extracted from the Italian Mortality Database, which is collected by the Italian National Census Bureau (ISTAT) and processed by the Statistics Unit of National Centre for Epidemiology, Surveillance and Health Promotion (CNESPS) at the National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità).

Results:

We found Differences between qualification groups broken down by age bands. We may see differences between qualification groups in most age groups in both sex. We may see a mortality gradient in Italian people aged 15 to 64 years old, and in the Italian male population aged 75+ years (P < 0.001). While in people 15 to 64 years death by natural causes were more frequent than suicide in those with lower qualification, in those with higher qualification suicide deaths were more frequent than deaths by natural causes. Only in the very old male adults the situation is reversed, and suicide was more frequent than death by natural causes in those with 5 years of education or lower (85.1% vs. 80.7%), and lower in those with 6+ years of education (14.9% vs. 19.3%).

Conclusions:

This study highlights that education achievement is related to suicide risk in the Italian population. Age and gender differences were identified in this research.