Job losses caused by the global credit crunch may prompt more people to kill themselves in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, according to a researcher who studied suicide rates during Asia's currency crisis a decade ago.
Suicides among men climbed about 40 percent in all three locations in 1998 compared with a year earlier, and rose about 20 percent among women, said Shu-sen Chang, a psychiatrist with the University of Bristol in the U.K. The increases correlated with a surge in unemployment and an economic slump triggered by currency devaluations in Asia in mid-1997, he said.
"Around the time of the recession, we saw an acute rise in the unemployment rate and these changes seemed to be associated with the economic crisis and the rise in the suicide rate," Chang said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "We concluded that changes in unemployment rates might contribute to some of the rise in the suicide rate."