Mobility and Mental Health. Residential mobility, its context and its impact on suicide risk in Belgium

Belgium shows one of the highest suicide rates in Europe, and the highest in Western Europe. Factors explaining suicidal behaviours are plural, and part of them deal with life course and stressful events. If the impact of a separation is a well-known determinant of mental health issues and suicide risk - especially for men -, little is known about the association between residential mobility and suicide risk. Still, the two events are entangled, as in most cases at least one of the ex-partners will move out of the shared place. This research investigates the impact of residential mobility in g... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Damiens, Joan Jany
3rd international Conference on Migrations and Mobility
Dokumenttyp: conferenceObject
Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26990060
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/265284

Belgium shows one of the highest suicide rates in Europe, and the highest in Western Europe. Factors explaining suicidal behaviours are plural, and part of them deal with life course and stressful events. If the impact of a separation is a well-known determinant of mental health issues and suicide risk - especially for men -, little is known about the association between residential mobility and suicide risk. Still, the two events are entangled, as in most cases at least one of the ex-partners will move out of the shared place. This research investigates the impact of residential mobility in general, and in a context of union dissolution, on suicide risk among the working-age population. The use of administrative data, based on the National Register, the death certificates and the 2001 and 2011 Population Census, allowed to follow men and women aged 20 to 79-year-old living in Belgium from 2008 to 2015, and reconstruct their partnership and residential course. Survival analyses and Cox regression models were conducted, and helped to control for the exposure time of each individual. The first results of this ongoing research show that frequent moves (2+) over a two-year period are associated with a subsequent higher risk of suicide, while only one move during the observation period does not increase nor reduce the suicide risk. Moreover, the motivation of the move matters: the simultaneous combination of a move and a separation increases men and women’s suicide risk within the two following years, independently from the partnership situation at the moment of the death. Results control for some demographic and socioeconomic individual characteristics, such as educational level, housing tenure and professional occupation. This research contributes to a better understanding of mental health determinants It also highlights the vulnerability triggered by frequent moves and moves in a context of separation.