TOKYO (Reuters) – Suicide rates in Japan have jumped in the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among women and children, even though they fell in the first wave when the government offered leaflets generous to people, find study.
The July-October suicide rate rose 16% from the same period a year earlier, a steep reversal of a 14% decline in February-June, according to a study by researchers at the University of Hong Kong and the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.
“Unlike normal economic conditions, this pandemic disproportionately affects the psychological health of children, adolescents and women (especially housewives),” the authors of the study published Friday in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
The study looked at the early decline in suicide.
But the decline has reversed – with the suicide rate jumping 37% for women, about five times the increase among men – as the ongoing pandemic hurts businesses where women get their hands on it. surface, increasing the burden on working mothers, while domestic violence escalates, the report said.
The study, based on health ministry data from November 2016 to October 2020, found that the child suicide rate was spewing 49% in the second wave, according to the period after school closures across the country .
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga this month imposed a COVID-19 state of emergency for Tokyo and three prefectures around them in an effort to halt the recovery. It expanded this week to seven other prefectures, including Osaka and Kyoto.
Taro Kono, minister of administrative and regulatory reform, told Reuters on Thursday that while the government would consider widening the state of crisis, “they cannot kill the economy. ”
“People are worried about COVID-19. But many people have also committed suicide because they have lost their jobs, lost their income and lost hope, ”he said. “We need to strike a balance between regulating COVID-19 and regulating the economy.”
Reciting with Eimi Yamamitsu; Edited by William Mallard