20 Percent of Global Suicides Linked to Unemployment

Suicide, long associated with the plight of the unemployed, was exacerbated by the Great Recession that put tens of millions of people out of work in the U.S. and around the world.

In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, the number of suicides worldwide directly linked to unemployment spiked by 5,000 cases, according to a new University of Zurich study. Over the past decade and a half, one in five suicides were closely associated with depression stemming from joblessness worries – or 45,000 cases a year.

The new research, published by The Lancet Psychiatry, was based on data gathered from 63 countries including the U.S. between 2000 and 2011. It found that the risk of suicide as an outgrowth of losing a job grew during the period by between 20 percent and 30 percent across virtually all regions of the world.

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