Suicides and undetermined intent deaths: a trend analysis

There is general agreement that suicides are likely to be undercounted. In many countries the degree of undercounting of suicides is so great that it threatens the validity of research based on official statistics. In this article the trends in suicides and deaths classified as undetermined intent (DUI) were analyzed from 1956 to 2005 using time series analysis to evaluate the relationship between time series. Between 1956 and 2005 the male suicide rate increased two times (from 296,3 to 598,8 per 1 miln. of population), the rate of DUI increased 5.5 times (from 107,5 to 587,9 per 1 miln. of population), the ratio of suicide rate and DUI rate increased 3.3 times (from 0,3 to 0,98). During the same period the female suicide rate increased by 24,6% (from 75,2 to 93,7 per 1 miln. of population), the rate of DUI increased 5.9 times (from 19,2 to 113,6 per 1 miln. of population), the ratio of suicide rate and DUI rate increased 4.5 times (from 0,3 to 1,34). The results of the analysis indicate the presence of a statistically significant association between these variable for male in soviet period (r=0,33; p=0,05)...