Warming and climate change also affect suicide rates

A study of global warming could lead to an increase in suicide rates. It is because heat can amplify depressed emotions and cause extreme behavior. If climate change continues with the current trend, there will be more than 40,000 additional suicides in North America by 2050.

Marshall Burk, a research scientist at Stanford University in the United States, said that the suicide rate of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from 1968 to 2004 and that of Mexico from 1990 to 2010, The suicide rate was analyzed with climate change. It is a way of statistically removing suicide by other factors after determining how the suicide rate changes when the temperature is high. The study found that in the United States, the rate of suicide rose by 0.68% and Mexico by 2.1% per 1 ° C monthly average temperature.

The researchers predicted that if current climate change persists, the suicide rates in the two countries will increase to 1.4% and 2.3% by 2050, respectively. "The number of suicides can increase to an additional 44,000, which is close to the number of suicides due to the economic downturn," the researchers said.

To identify the cause, the team extracted 600 million words in the SNS Twitter from 2014 to 2015 and analyzed it in relation to the heat. As a result, it was confirmed that the words "I am lonely," "I want to die," and "I want to die" increase by up to 0.79% every month when the average temperature rises by 1 ℃. "The heat waves lead to an emotional state of self-harm by increasing depression," Burke said. "We should take measures to combat climate change and mental health."