Abstract
Spatial Risk Factors for Suicide Across the Adult Life Course
Tamkinat Rauf, PhD, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Description: The Social Causes of Suicide. Social environments are critical risk factors of poor mental health generally, and specifically for suicide, one of the leading causes of death in the United States. 29-33 The current project aims to better understand how different types of environmental risk factors interact with each other to shape suicide risk. We will use administrative data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) linked with CDC PLACES dataset, MSU Correlates of State Policy database, MIT County Presidential Election Returns 2000-2020, the Current Population Survey, and the American Community Survey. As such, each case in the database will be accompanied by comprehensive information about the social context of disadvantage that the victim inhabited. Then, using tools from machine learning and network (cluster) analysis as well as causal inference strategies we will analyze patterns of co-occurrence, clustering, and centrality of the disadvantages across ages (early midlife (25-44), late midlife (45-64), and older adulthood (65+)) for men and women. We will also examine how the patterns of inter-relationships have changed over time and in relation to economic and political trends. The output of this research will be useful for more precisely identifying high-risk groups within given macrosocial contexts and will help inform more strategic approaches to decrease suicide among the most vulnerable groups. CDHA themes: Health Policy & Health Services; Place, Health, and Aging; Aging & Health Disparities. In addition to the emerging scholar pilots, CDHA will also award a first Innovation pilot that develops new techniques aligned with our signature themes in the context of our major primary data collection efforts. This project will align with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS)