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Have Lockdowns Caused Suicides During COVID-19?
The evidence behind a contentious point
CW: Suicide, Mental Health, Lockdowns. If this blog raises issues for you, here is a list of international helplines where you can get some help.
This year has been a hard one, there is no doubt. Usually, we get to December and I’m writing articles about Christmas cake and losing weight, or whether you’ll stick to your new year’s resolution, or perhaps summing up the fun and games of bad science reporting in the last 12 months.
Instead, we’re here talking about suicide. Not an easy topic.
There has been a common claim throughout this year, repeated endlessly by COVID-19 denialists and anti-regulation activists, that any form of government restriction will cause horrible waves of suicide. Many earlier in the year took to saying that there would be a “tsunami” of suicides due to lockdowns, as declines in mental health during COVID-19 began to become apparent.
Now, while suicide data often takes time to accumulate, a number of published studies and government reports are out looking at the question of whether lockdowns have been associated with an increase in the rate of suicide across the world.
And in general? They haven’t been.
A Heavy Topic
Right at the outset, I should make some things clear. Firstly, this data is aggregated at the population level, and by definition cannot speak to individual experience. What that means is that it is entirely possible that lockdowns have caused some people to die of suicide, even if on average there has not been an increase. If this is the case, however, then by definition lockdowns have also prevented some suicides, if the rates have not gone up.
This leads into the second important point, which is that anecdotes do not provide us with much data here. There are many people who die of suicide for many reasons, and the stories of individuals, while often heart-breaking, do not really tell us if the laws have had an impact overall.
