PA 20-4-2021 Suicide in bangladesh: unfolding the epidemiological burden from a nationwide survey

Background In Bangladesh, suicide has become an emerging public health problem like other Asian countries. However, the real burden of suicide has neither been recognized nor been addressed properly by the policy makers due to lack of valid and reliable national data. Objective The study aimed at exploring the epidemiological burden of suicide in Bangladesh. Methodology A nationwide cross-sectional survey was conducted between March and June 2016. Multi-stage cluster sampling was used to select required number of households. It uses the strategy based on probability-proportional-to-size (PPS) methodologies with separate urban and rural samples. After cleaning and validation, data from 2 99 216 household residents was available for analysis. 64 data collectors and 16 supervisors were engaged in the study. Data was collected on tablets using a custom data entry program for the survey. Once data was transferred to the server, the data was validated and exported to SPSS v21 for analysis. Results The study identified suicide as the leading cause of injury deaths in Bangladesh. Every year, an estimated 23 868 people die due to suicide in Bangladesh (14.7/100,000 population per year). Suicide began in early adolescence and continued in all age groups after that, peaking in late adolescence and then later in old age. The all-age fatal suicide rate in males was 8.0/100,000 and 21.4/100,000 in females. There was a clear predominance of females until middle and older age groups. The majority of suicides taken placed at the residence (71%) of the person involved. Poisoning and hanging were the overwhelming modes of suicides. Pesticides accounted for almost three quarters (73.9%) of all oral agents used for suicide. Conclusion Findings of this study could be the used in proposing an epidemiological appraisal to prevent suicide in a comprehensive way.