Hassan Ngala
2024-07-09
Suicide is a critical global public health issue with 703,000 people commiting suicide annually worldwide (Global statistics on suicide) translating to a global suicide rate of 10.5 per 100,000.
Suicide was the fourth leading cause of death among 15–29-year-olds globally in 2019 (WHO).
Putting this to perspective its like losing Tana River (315,941) and Taita Taveta (340,664) counties at the Coast of Kenya.
Male inmates before the 50th birthday are at a relatively higher risk of suicide than females.
Southern Africa region has been experiencing relatively high suicide rates e.g., Lesotho (72.4 per 100,000) which X7 the global rate.
In this study, Time series analysis was used to model and forecast suicide rates in Southern Africa region (Botswana (BWA),Lesotho (LSO),Namibia (NAM),South Africa (ZAF) and Eswatini (SWZ)).
Objective: Identify temporal patterns and forecast future rates.
WHO Data (2001-2019) from the Southern Africa region was analyzed.
The results below are from the differenced time series to ensure stationarity in first and second-order moments of the data.
At \(\alpha=0.05\) level of significance, results from the KPSS test indicates stationarity in the series p-value=0.1.
State actors : Ministry of public health need for increased survellaince/ monitoring and roll out of multisectoral strategies for awareness creation and prevention of suicide among population at risk (WHO).
Mainstream Media Role - Allocate more airtime,resources on enhancing Public awareness through mental health programmes.
Need for collaboration and synergy in programming between Government and Non-state actors (e.g., NGOs) to maximize the impact of resources allocated for managing the problem.
Research community: Need to explore impact of various pandemics eg COVID, macro and micro economic conditions on suicide rates.