| Object: Suicide stands the fifth in death table and becomes a major public health problem in China. Suicide deaths affect society by consuming both human lives and economic resources and by causing affliction. It is important to study the epedemiology, the economical burden and the psychologyical burden of suicide in order to offer a backgroud for establishing the strategy of suicide prevention. Method: The targets come from 66 cases of suicide death, which occurred in the country of Zhuanghe and Jinzhou in Dalian city in 2000. The number of the whole informers adds up to 330, which includes the two respective informers of the targets and the controls. The present study describes the epidemic of suicide, estimates the economic impact of suicide deaths of these 66 cases, using the human capital approach, and analyses the psychological effects of suicide death on relatives by using the psychological scale of CES-D and GSS (The General Social Survey Attitudes towards Suicide-GSS).Result: For the 66 suicide deaths reported, the rate of male versus female is 2.67:1. The curve of age shows two pinnacles. The most suicide deaths of male occur in 35-55 years old, when they have the greatest production. While the most of female occur in 25-40 years old, when they are in the stage of giving birth. Suicide deaths consume human lives at 1949.22 person years. Indirect costs, which estimate the value of lost productivity due to premature death, are $62,379,709.61. Indirect cost per capita is $945,147.12. The mean family cost in 2000 is $307,204.10. People show different attitudes to the death of different gender. To female the attitude is more tolerant than that to male. Even people show strong disagreement to the action of suicide, the attitude is not the same to different causes, which lead to suicide. People accept the suicide resulted from other reasons such as bankrupts more difficult than incurable diseases. The relatives show more unacceptable attitudes to suicide. The relatives show high frequency of the incidence of depression. Conclusion: The most significant impact of a suicide death remains the loss of human life, the economic cost of this public health tragedy in the country of Zhuanghe and Jinzhou in Dalian city is great, and suicide put psychological pressure on relatives. To our knowledge, this report provides the first burden-of-suicide analysis performed in China. |
