Interaction Domains and Suicide: A Population-based Panel Study of Suicides in Stockholm, 1991-1999

This article examines how suicides influence suicide risks of others within two interaction domains: the family and the workplace. A distinction is made between dyad-based social-interaction effects and degree-based exposure effects. A unique database including all individuals who ever lived in Stockholm during the 1990s is analyzed. For about 5.6 years on average, 1.2 million individuals are observed, and 1,116 of them commit suicide. Controlling for other risk factors, men exposed to a suicide in the family (at work) are 8.3 (3.5) times more likely to commit suicide than non-exposed men. The social-interaction effect thus is larger within the family domain; yet work-domain exposure is more important for the suicide rate because individuals are more often exposed to suicides of coworkers than family members.