Elsevier

Journal of Affective Disorders

Volume 198, 1 July 2016, Pages 206-221
Journal of Affective Disorders

Research paper
Suicides in commuting railway systems: The case of Stockholm county, Sweden

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.02.051Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The study is innovative because it assesses the role of the environment for suicides in transportation environments.

  • The study contributes to the understanding of the time dimension of suicides in commuting train systems, daily, weekly and seasonally.

  • This is a study that adopts a spatial approach to suicides in transportation environments by assessing two types of clusters techniques.

  • It contributes with new Scandinavian evidence to the international literature.

  • The study follows a long tradition of this Journal in publishing research on suicides on transit environments.

Abstract

The objective of this study is to understand the spatial and temporal dynamics of suicides in commuting railway environments. Data on suicides in Stockholm commuting railway from 2006 to 2013 was analysed. The study sets out to identify significant clusters in suicides then evaluate whether commuting railway environments affect variations in suicide rates. Fieldwork inspection, spatial cluster techniques (NNHC and Getis-Ord statistics) and regression models underlie the methodology of study. Findings show no seasonality was observed in suicide cases, but winter months concentrate a larger share of events. Suicides do not occur evenly throughout the day but tend to take place more often in weekdays. Modelling findings shows that suicide rates increase with speed trains and decrease where barriers along tracks are installed. Although high speed trains are still a motive of concern for suicide prevention, findings call for a whole railway-approach to safety - one that extends maintenance beyond the platforms and stations' vicinities.

Introduction

Suicides in transportation environments are relatively few in number compared to suicides in other environments, yet these tragic events have a strong impact on society. Train suicides in particular incur high costs as a result of driver and bystander trauma as well as service delays (O’Donnell and Farmer, 1994). This may explain the more frequent examination in the international literature of suicides in railway environments as a phenomenon that may be prevented (Rådbo and Andersson, 2012). To date, studies have been devoted to temporal variations in suicides (e.g. van Houwelingen and Beersma, 2001, Erazo et al., 2005, Schmidtke, 1994), the demographic and socioeconomic circumstances of the victims (e.g. Emmerson and Cantor, 1993, van Houwelingen and Kerkhof, 2008) and the specific country or regional contexts of suicides (e.g. De Leo and Krysinska, 2008). However, this body of research lacks in-depth assessment of the impact of temporal and environmental factors on suicide events in railway systems, especially commuter train systems.

The objective of this article is two-fold. The study first assesses temporal and spatial patterns of suicide events in a commuter railway system. It then evaluates whether the commuter train and track settings affect variations in suicide rates, controlling for a number of local and contextual factors using regression models and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Commuter trains in Stockholm, Sweden, are the area of study.

We focus on collisions involving commuter trains, because they are the most frequent in rail transport, more frequent than in underground systems, for example. Yet, as suggested by Rådbo and Andersson (2012: 778), based on an analysis of data from 2005 to 2008 for Stockholm, the whole railway system is affected by these events. The work reported here builds on previous studies done by Rådbo et al., 2005, Rådbo and Andersson, 2012 as well as on Uittenbogaard and Ceccato (2015) on suicides at underground stations. The study contributes new Scandinavian evidence (based on recently available datasets) to the international literature.

Section snippets

Suicide and the environment

Previous studies on suicides have suggested that the availability of ‘lethal means’ in the railway environment strongly favours its selection as a means of suicide (e.g., Erazo et al., 2005; Law et al., 2009). Yet, not all stations (or parts of the railway system, such as tracks) are equally likely facilitators of suicide. The key issue is to understand which environmental elements in the railway system can be installed, changed or removed and thereby save lives. A prevention strategy that

Study area

In Sweden, 5–10% of all suicides are related to transportation environments and nearly one in five takes place in Stockholm (Karolinska Institutets Folkhälsoakademi, 2010: 30). Proportions as high as 5% are also found in Finland, Belgium, Germany and Portugal (Silla and Luoma, 2012, Andriessen and Krysinska, 2012; Hegerl et al., 2013; Sousa et al., 2015) and a slightly lower proportion in the Netherlands (van Houwelingen et al. 2010).

The study area covers the whole of Stockholm County and the

Data

The data used in this study was provided by the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) from a database based on reports from the Synergi system. The Synergi system is a reporting system for all accidents and problems which occur in the railway system. The suicide reports were specially filtered and extracted from 2006 till 2013, so that all events classified as accidents were excluded from the analysis. The Synergi system has several columns of data split between accident/collision or

Methodology and data

The data from the Swedish Transport Administration was analysed using spreadsheet software to initially explore the times of the suicides and the stations in Stockholm County. Suicides were linked to the commuter train stations, as reported in the Synergi system. Levels of suicide were calculated for each hour of the day, per station and per month. This data resulted in time distributions of suicides in the regional train system. After relating passenger data to each station, suicide rates were

Variations over time

Suicide events in the commuter railway system in Stockholm did not occur evenly throughout the day. Rather, peak hours of the day and one early in the night were observed. Small pikes were observed around the rush hours (9 am and 5 pm), the off-peak hours of 3 pm and 7 pm and midnight (12 pm). These results go against the findings of Sousa et al. (2015) in Portugal, where afternoon and non-rush hour were the times when most suicides were observed (Fig. 2).

No seasonality effect was observed in

Discussion of modelling results

The model results show that high speed is a predictor of suicides in the commuter railway system in Stockholm County. Rådbo (2008:23) pointed out the importance of train speed for the selection of a suicide location in Sweden, explaining that ‘a train going at 200 km/h has a braking distance of more than 1 km even for emergency use’. With not enough time for the train to stop, this choice leads to almost certain death.

We agree with Rådbo and Andersson (2012: 778), who noted that ‘express trains,

Conclusion and recommendations

The study sets out to assess temporal and spatial patterns of suicide events and evaluate whether the environments affect variations in suicide rates. Data on suicides in Stockholm’s commuter railway system from 2006 to 2013 was analysed. Fieldwork inspections, spatial cluster techniques and regression models underlie the methodology of study. The work reported here built on previous studies in Sweden and elsewhere.

Confirming Hypothesis 1, findings showed that suicides do not follow a seasonal

Acknowledgements

We thank the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) for funding this research project (Grant number TRV 2014/23640). We are also grateful for the support of Christer Persson at Centre for Transport Studies, Royal Institute of Technology, in the early stages of this project. Thanks also go to experts from the Swedish Transport Administration and Stockholm municipality for providing data and digital maps for the spatial analysis in this study.

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