Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol (2005) 40: 785–791 DOI 10.1007/s00127-005-0960-x ORIGINAL PAPER Mohsen Rezaeian . Graham Dunn . Selwyn St Leger . Louis Appleby The ecological association between suicide rates and indices of deprivation in English local authorities Accepted: 2 June 2005 / Published online: 22 September 2005  Abstract Introduction There are several published studies that have been focused on the ecological asso- ciation between suicide rates in different areas with indices of deprivation or fragmentation. Most of these studies, however, have used census-based indices of deprivation or fragmentation. In the present study the newly developed Indices of Deprivation have been used, taking into account the results of the spatial auto- correlation tests. Methods Data on all deaths for which suicide or an open verdict was returned during 1996– 1998 in England were subjects of this study. These data were provided by the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness. The indices of deprivation and the population counts were provided by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Region (DETR) and Office for Nation- al Statistics (ONS), respectively. Results The results show that, in England as a whole, the rates of suicide in young and middle-aged males were strongly associated with the indices of deprivation. However, the rates of suicide in females and in older age groups were less influenced by the indices of deprivation. In the pres- ent study all the indices of deprivation tended to show a similar pattern in which a better socio-eco- nomic status of local authorities was associated with a lower rate of suicide. Conclusion These findings sug- gest that at the local authority level, the “hot spots” index of deprivation may represent the same level of magnitude in predicting the rates of suicide as the number of unemployed or income-deprived people. However, more studies using multilevel modelling are needed to shed more light on the ecological associa- tions between suicide rates and socio-economic and social cohesion status.  Key words ecological association – suicide – indices of deprivation – English local authorities Introduction There are several published studies that have focused on the ecological association between suicide rates in different areas with indices of deprivation (ID) or frag- mentation (for instance, [1, 8, 9, 11, 20, 25, 34, 35, 41, 46]). In some of these studies, as Gunnell [26] observes, there is a clear association between socio-economic or social cohesion status and the rates of suicide. He be- lieves that the explanations for the observed associa- tions are not clear and might embrace the direct effects of material deprivation on mental health, higher levels of unemployment and job insecurity in people of lower socio-economic status. It might also include different social support patterns in different social classes and migration to the lower socio-economic position in people who develop mental illness [26]. Since in all these studies, census-based data have almost always been used to define social deprivation or fragmentation of administrative areas in the different levels, it was, therefore, only possible to apply these indices to the suicide rates around the census years and not between them. Moreover, as the social climate changes in many countries, it is necessary to review the SPPE 960 M. Rezaeian . Prof. G. Dunn (*) Biostatistics Group Division of Epidemiology & Health Sciences, Stopford Building Oxford Road Manchester, M13 9PT, UK E-Mail: graham.dunn@manchester.ac.uk M. Rezaeian Social Medicine Dept. Rafsanjan Medical School Rafsanjan, Iran S. St Leger Evidence Based Population Health Unit Division of Epidemiology & Health Sciences University of Manchester Manchester, UK L. Appleby Division of Psychiatry University of Manchester Manchester, UK