The deaths by suicide in the general population fell by 20 % and 8 % during the two confinements of 2020 compared to previous years, “despite an increase in anxio-depressive disorders and sleep difficulties”. >
Le Monde with AFP
The crisis linked to the COVVI-19 has had “contrasting effects” on the French population, estimates the National Suicide Observatory (ONS), in a report published Tuesday, September 6, evoking a general drop in suicides during confinements from 2020 and a differentiated evolution of suicidal gestures according to populations.
Contrary to what was feared, the pandemic did not lead to “an immediate increase in suicidal behaviors”, explains the observatory of the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (DREES) In this study devoted to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
Suicidal gestures even “decreased at the start of the pandemic despite an increase in anxio-depressive disorders and sleep difficulties”, writes the organism.
Suicide deaths in the general population thus fell by 20 % and 8 % during the two confinements of 2020 compared to previous years, and short-stay hospitalizations for self-inflicted lesions of 10 % out of 2020 compared At the period 2017-2019, he evaluated.
These figures, which must still be consolidated, correspond to the data “collected in other countries of similar economic level”, and suggest that confinements “have been able to punctually alleviate suicidal risk” thanks to “feeling of sharing A collective test “or even because of” increased monitoring by loved ones “.
possible” rebound effects “
However, this decrease did not continue excluding confinement, because “the overall number of suicide deaths, their distribution according to the age or the place of death” between the beginning of January 2020 and the end of March 2021 “Do not seem to have been affected by the pandemic,” continues the ons.
Another education of the report: since the end of 2020, hospitalizations for self-inflicted lesions have significantly increased for “adolescent girls and young women, in contrast to the rest of the population”, notes the observatory.
These were affected “by the first confinement, with an increase in depressive syndromes, which did not find the levels prior to the pandemic once its most acute phases,” he said, evoking The “role of accentuation” of preexisting psychological vulnerabilities played by the COVID-19 in young people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.
Drees, however, calls for a prudent interpretation of these figures due to possible “rebound effects” and the “general tendency to decrease suicidal behaviors, observable since the 1980s”.