A protective role of urban greenspace on the association between night-time heat and suicide in Seoul, South Korea

Abstract

Suicide, a leading cause of death among the youth, has shown a positive association with high temperatures. However, few studies have explored the association between tropical nights and suicide and the potential role of greenness on this association. We investigated the association between suicide and two hot night indices: hot night duration (HNd) and hot night excess (HNe), representing heat duration and excess heat during night-time. We also explored whether the association was modified by urban greenspace, measured by satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), across 25 districts in Seoul, South Korea from 2000 to 2020. Based on the multi-district daily time-series data, we performed a space-time-stratified case-crossover analysis with a distributed lag linear model with lags of up to 7 days for HNd and HNe, adjusting for daily mean temperature and relative humidity. We added an interaction term between the hot night index and NDVI to assess the effect modification of greenness. In total, 14693 suicides were included in this study. The relative risk (RR) of suicide per a 10% increase in HNd was 1.059 (95% CI: 1.017–1.103) in low NDVI areas and 1.031 (95% CI: 0.988–1.075) in high NDVI areas. The RR per a 1ºC increase in HNe was 1.011 (95% CI: 0.998–1.024) and 1.005 (95% CI: 0.992–1.018) in low and high NDVI areas, respectively. Greenspaces have expanded over time in all districts of Seoul, and the risk of suicide for night-time heat decreased over time in both low and high NDVI areas. Our findings suggest that exposure to night-time heat is associated with an increased risk of suicide, but this risk may be mitigated by greater greenspaces in urban areas. Prioritizing development and maintenance of urban greenspaces will be a critical co-benefit strategy for promoting public mental health in changing climates.