Rising heat linked to spike in suicides

LONDON: A hotter planet could lead to tens of thousands more suicides by 2050 in the United States and Mexico alone, unless global warming is curbed, according to a study published on Monday.

Researchers examined decades worth of temperature data against suicide rates in US counties and Mexican municipalities, some dating back to the 1960s, and found that hotter weather was linked to increases in deaths by suicide.

“Hotter temperatures are clearly not the only, nor the most important, risk factor for suicide,” lead author Marshall Burke, an economist at Stanford University, said in a statement.

“But our findings suggest that warming can have a surprisingly large impact on suicide risk, and this matters for both our understanding of mental health as well as for what we should expect as temperatures continue to warm,” he said.

According to their analysis, a 1°C increase in average monthly temperature led to a 0.7% rise in suicide rates in the US and a 2.1% rise in Mexico.

The paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, also analysed the language used in over half a billion Twitter posts and found that depressive language increased during hot weather.

The study projected that if global warming is not capped by 2050, there could be at least an additional 21,000 suicides in the two countries alone.

The past three years were the hottest on record, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation said in March. – Reuters