مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد بازار کار و رفاه ذهنی (الزویر)

Suicide is considered a public health problem in the United States. In 2009 alone, suicide was responsible for more than 36,909 deaths, making it the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. In the same year, 2.2 times more people died as a result of suicide than as a result of assault. Suicide was also the only cause of death showing a significant increase between 2008 and 2009 (Kochanek et al., 2011). What is more worrisome is that the declining trend of adult (aged 20+) suicide rates in the United States between 1986 and 2000 has been reversed since 2001: while America’s adult suicide rates declined by an average annual rate of 1.5% during 1986–2000, it experienced an annual average of 1.4% growth between 2001 and 2007 (Fig. 1). Among the known risk factors of suicide are psychiatric disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, incarceration, family suicide history, history of violence and physical or sexual abuse, family disruption (such as divorce or loss ofloved ones),major injury or illness, abrupt social or economic changes, excessive stress, and feelings of insecurity and hopelessness.1 Therefore, the recent hike in U.S. suicide rates may point to declining mental wellbeing of Americans Several risk factors of suicide, such as excessive stress, divorce, and feelings of financial insecurity can be influenced by macroeconomic conditions. As a result, over the past three decades, research has attempted to examine the link between macroeconomic conditions and suicide rates. The overall finding of this body of literature shows that alongside other social and geographic factors, macroeconomic variables such as income levels and unemployment rates could explain the patterns of suicide in a society.2 From amongst these indicators, researchers have especially focused on the link between unemployment and suicide as unemployment rates are included in literally all macroeconomic analysis of suicides. While there is unanimity among researchers in including unemployment rates in empirical studies as an important explanatory variable of suicide, there is hardly any agreement on the link between suicide and unemployment rates. For example, in their time-series analyses of aggregate suicide data for the U.S. between 1940 and 1984, Yang et al.(1992), Yang and Lester (1995), and Yang and Stack (1992) show that increasing unemployment rates can raise suicide rates. Also, in his 1972–1991 state-level panel study of the U.S., Ruhm (2000) also finds unemployment and suicide to be positively correlated. However, more recent panel data analyses have cast doubt on these earlier findings.