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Background: Taipei has seen a substantial increase in suicide rates during the past decade, with a significant rise between 2004 and 2006, the time of this study period. Methods: A decompositional analytic method was used to quantify the relative contributions of age, sex and case fatality of methods to attempts and suicides. Results: From 2004 to 2006, the rate of fatal and non-fatal suicide attempts combined for population aged 15 years or above in Taipei increased by 37.3%, while the suicide rate increased by 29.2%. Three factors in these analyses contributed to the increase in suicide rates: (1) an increase in number of attempts, (2) a greater proportion of men among fatal and non-fatal attempts and (3) an increase in the use of a lethal method--burning of charcoal to produce carbon monoxide. The authors estimated that 74.5% and 25.6% among men and women, respectively, of the overall increased suicide mortality were attributable to increased 'charcoal burning suicides.' Conclusions: The rise in suicide rate reflected an increase in attempts and an influx of working-age men joining the pool of people attempting suicide. The much larger size of the attempter pool had the effect of reducing the case fatality even as the suicide rate climbed. The increase in the number of suicide attempts and the rise in the suicide rate were age-, sex-, and method-specific. These results strongly support the concept that reducing the total number of attempts is a central element to curbing suicides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Media guidelines for suicide reporting are available in many countries. However, to what extent the mass media comply with the guidelines is unknown. Few studies are available that investigate systematically whether the mass media reflect the epidemiological reality of suicide deaths in their articles. Methods: Based on the WHO media guidelines, this study investigated the characteristics of newspaper articles of suicides in three Chinese communities, namely Hong Kong, Taiwan and Guangzhou. Epidemiological comparisons were conducted to identify the age and gender differences between the suicide victims as reported in the newspapers and the official records of suicide deaths in all three places. Results: The results found that one media characteristic complied with the WHO media guidelines (ie, only about 2% of the articles were printed on the front page), but there were a number of instances of non-compliance (ie, only 4--14% provided sources for help-seeking and 27--90% printed with photos). The epidemiological comparisons revealed an over-representation of younger suicides and an under-representation of late-life suicides in the newspapers of all three places. Furthermore, female suicides were found to be under-reported in Taiwan and Guangzhou newspapers, but not in Hong Kong papers. Conclusion: Non-compliant suicide articles are prevalent in the newspapers of these three Chinese settings. The observed media misrepresentations may potentially mislead the public and the policy makers about the actual risk for suicide in some demographic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To assess changes in the intensity of suicide news reporting in Taiwan's local newspapers after the arrival of a daily tabloid-type newspaper, Apple Daily (AD), and evaluate the impact of suicide news reporting on actual suicides and possible mutual causation. Methods: A counting process was used to estimate the intensity of daily suicide news items reported in the China Times (CT) and United Daily (UD) before and after the arrival of AD (2002--05). Poisson regression models were used to assess the impact of the intensity of suicide news reporting on the actual number of next day suicides. Granger's causation model was used to assess mutual causation between suicide news reporting and actual suicides. Results: There was a significant increase in reporting intensity of suicide news in the UD soon after the entry of the AD into Taiwan's media market, while a delayed increase of approximately 1 year was observed in the CT. After the arrival of the AD, the reporting intensity in the UD was significantly related to the occurrence of actual suicides (p<0.05), even after controlling for social variables, whereas no significant correlation was previously observed. Mutual causation between suicide news reporting and actual suicides was also observed. Conclusions: The presence of the AD in Taiwan has fuelled competitive reporting of suicide news among traditional newspapers. This increase in the intensity of suicide news reporting has consequently had an impact on the actual number of suicides. This provides further empirical support for improving media reporting as a key element in suicide prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Older adults worldwide are at a greater risk of suicide than other age groups. There is a scarcity of prospective studies exploring risk factors for suicide in older people and their discriminative ability to identify future suicide.Methods: We examined a prospective cohort of senior Taipei City residents between 2005 and 2009 (N=101,764). Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to determine significant risk factors and to construct a predictive score. The accuracy of the derived score in the prediction was tested by Receiver Operating Characteristic analysis.Results: Male sex (Hazard Ratio [HR]=3.41, p<0.001), lower education (HR=3.31, p<0.001) and lower income (HR=2.52, p=0.01) were associated with an increased risk of suicide, as well as depressed mood (HR=1.44, p=0.02; per unit increase in a 4-point scale) and insomnia (HR=1.30, p=0.03; per unit increase in a 4-point scale). The derived prediction score yielded a sensitivity of 0.63 a specificity of 0.73 and an area under curve of 0.73. Removing depressed mood from the prediction model did not significantly alter suicide predictability (P=0.11).Limitations: The dataset examined did not contain information regarding to important risk factors such as substance misuse and prescribed medications and the measures of mental health were relatively limited.Conclusion: Prediction of suicide based on factors recorded in a routine health screen of elderly people was unsatisfactory; the strongest predictors were factors that cannot be easily altered. Further understanding of how the socioeconomic condition of seniors contributes to suicide may provide valuable insights for intervention targeting this growing population-at-risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]