Suicides and Epidemiological Parameters of Tuberculosis in Russia

Correspondence to: Yury E. Razvodovsky Grodno State Medical University, 80 Gorky Street, Grodno 230009, Belarus tel.: + 375 0152 70 18 84, fax: +375 0152 43 53 41, e-mail: razvodovsky@tut.by yury_razvodovsky@mail.ru Copyright © 2018 KBCSM, Zagreb e-mail: alcoholism.kbcsm@gmail.com • www.http://apr.kbcsm.hr Abstract Tuberculosis and suicide are related to medical and social problems, and these epidemiological parameters are often considered as the indicators of psychosocial distress. There are theoretical assumptions and empirical evidence which suggest the positive association between suicide and mortality from tuberculosis at individual and population levels. The aim of this study was an attempt to identify the aggregate level relationship between the epidemiological parameters of tuberculosis and the suicide rates in Russia. Tuberculosis incidence / mortality and suicide rates were analyzed from 1980 to 2015 using time series analysis to evaluate the relationship between time series. The results of the analysis indicate the presence of a statistically significant association between tuberculosis mortality and suicide rates at lag zero (r= 0.6; SE=0.17). The relationship between the incidence of tuberculosis and suicide rates was also positive, but less evident (r= 0.4; SE=0.17). The results of this study suggest a positive aggregate-level relationship between tuberculosis mortality and suicide rates. These findings indirectly support the hypothesis that tuberculosis mortality can be considered as an indicator of psychosocial distress.