The regional pattern of suicide mortality in European part of Russia and Belarus

Geographic variation of suicide mortality across Europe poses a problem for social health epidemiology. The accurate interpretation of this phenomenon will be helpful for forecasting and prevention measures. The present article seeks contribution to understanding of spatial regularity in distribution of social and demographic indicators. The spatial pattern of suicide mortality in European part of Russia and Belarus over the period 1988-2013 has been studied. The distribution in ranking between 73 regions-subjects of Russian Federation and 6 regions of Belarus was investigated. This analysis was followed by a more detail examination of the suicide mortality distribution across the north-south axis by using latitudinal approach both for European part of Russia and Belarus. The findings show the long-term continuality in the violent mortality geographical pattern. The Spearman’s rank order correlation was found significant, for the maximum interval data available. For years 1988 and 2013, rank order correlation for 73 administrative regions of Russian Federation was r(s) = 0.66; p