Spatial Association between Socioeconomic Factors, Physical Geographic Factors, and Suicide in Thailand

Abstract

Background: Suicide is a significant cause of death in many countries worldwide. In Thailand, it ranks second in unnatural deaths, following accidents, with an increasing trend. This study aims to 1) describe the spatial distribution of suicide rates and 2) identify the spatial relationships among socioeconomic status, physical geography and suicide rates during the years 2012–2021. Methods: This study sought to explain the spatial distribution of suicide rates across provinces in Thailand from 2012 to 2021. The spatial relationships were analyzed using LISA and spatial regression. Results: The result obtained from univariate LISA indicated a concentration of suicide rates in the northern region of Thailand for the period from 2012 to 2021. Spatial regression analysis using OLS, SLM and SEM demonstrated the relationships between suicide rates and various variables, such as divorce rates, poverty rates, elderly proportions and NDWI. These factors exhibited a positive correlation with suicide rates and were statistically significant. Conversely, the NTL density and average rainfall displayed a negative correlation with suicide rates. Conclusion: Our study observed that the distribution of divorce rates, poverty population proportion, elderly population proportion and the normalized difference water index were likely to be associated with enhancing the suicide rate. However, the intensity of average Night-Time-Light (NTL) was observed to reduce the suicidal rate. Therefore, these present findings can be utilised in the development of policy as well as strategies concerning surveillance, control and prevention of suicide in Thailand.