Correlation of mean temperature and suicide rates of India

---

Original Article

Author Details : Gopala Sarma Poduri*

Volume : 7, Issue : 4, Year : 2024

Article Page : 95-98

https://doi.org/10.18231/j.sajhp.2024.022

Suggest article by email

Get Permission

---

Abstract

Background: Environmental temperature affects life in numerous ways and spheres. There were reports that it impacts human behavior of suicide. Indian medical literature was almost silent on this topic.
Aim: To find out the relationship between suicide and max., min., and average temperatures over a six-decade period in India.
Materials and Methods: The suicides for the years from 1964 to the year 2021 were collected from the Ministry of Home, Govt. of India, displayed National Crimes Record Bureau-Accidental Death & Suicides in India (NCRB-ADSI) portal. The annual Max., Min., and Average temperature were obtained from the website Indiastat for the same period. After basic analysis, the Spearman rank correlation coefficient was performed to find the association between suicides and temperature. The statistics were done using online software from Social Science Statistics.
Results: There were 5157992 suicides in 59 years-1964-2021 with a highest of 164033 in 2021 and a lowest of 38217 in 1979. The maximum temperature recorded was 30.08 °C in 2009. The lowest temperature of 17.2 °C was recorded in 1971. The average temperature ranged from 23.74 °C to 26.21 °C. There were no outliers in either. Spearman rank correlation coefficient was estimated to be: 0.73509. Spearman rank correlation coefficient showed a p-value of <0> Conclusion: Increasing temperature impacts suicide.

Keywords: Average Temperature, Maximum, Minimum, Suicide, Correlation

How to cite : Poduri G S, Correlation of mean temperature and suicide rates of India. South Asian J Health Prof 2024;7(4):95-98

This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.