Author(s)

William Henry Laverty¹, Ivan William Kelly²

¹Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.
²Department of Educational Psychology & Special Education, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.

Suicide is a serious social problem across the world. In this article we examine suicide rates in three Western countries over a longer period of time than is typically considered to determine if extended underlying patterns are discernable. Since assumptions of traditional time series analyses are likely violated with such long-term data, we have utilized Hidden Markov probability models in analyzing yearly suicide data (including birth sex) over a 60-year period across three countries (Canada, USA, and Great Britain). Apart from the expected larger numbers of suicides by males across all three countries, we uncovered two underlying states of 25.39 and 12.61 years duration within which differing trends for males and females are evident.

Suicide, Yearly Suicide Totals, Hidden Markov Model, Autoregressive HMM, Suicide in Great Britain, Suicide in Canada, Suicide in the United States

Laverty, W. and Kelly, I. (2019) Yearly Suicides across Canada, Great Britain and the United States from 1960 to 2015: A Search for Underlying Long-Term Trends. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7, 107-115. doi: 10.4236/jss.2019.76008.