Abstract:
Suicide is a public health concern in New Zealand. The rates of suicide amongst New Zealand youth, aged 15-25 years, are the highest in the OECD. Suicide statistics are also disproportionately overrepresented by males and Māori. The aim of this thesis was to contribute to the understanding of suicide in New Zealand. This thesis is underpinned by Durkheim's theory of suicide, which suggested that suicide risk is strongly influenced by the social context in which a person lives. This study utilised data from the anonymised datasets within the Statistics New Zealand Integrated Data Infrastructure. The cohort was constructed by linking census and mortality data and found that individuals that died as a result of suicide were less likely to have participated in the 2013 Census. The New Zealand Indices of Multiple Deprivation is an area-based measure of deprivation that allows researchers to investigate the association of health issues and different domains of deprivation. The IMD was a useful tool for situating the individual in their environment. The results demonstrated that individuals residing in areas of high education deprivation were more likely to die as a result of suicide. Applying Durkheim's theory, this thesis sought to understand if residential instability, a proxy measure for disruption in an individual's social environment, was associated with increased suicide risk. The findings indicated a positive correlation between increasing instability and suicide risk. This study also found that suicide decedents were more likely to have had contact with primary health services and tertiary services in the 0-3 months and 6-12 months preceding the event, respectively. The logistic regression adjusted for demographic variables, the overall IMD, residential instability and contact with health services. The findings of this study supported the theory that suicide is strongly influenced by the social environment and identified opportunities for preventative action.
