Abstract

Doc number: 124

Abstract

Background: The majority of fatalities on the European Union (EU) railways are suicides, representing about 60% of all railway fatalities. The aim of this study was to compare time patterns of suicidal behaviour on railway tracks in Germany between two observation periods (1995-1998 and 2005-2008) in order to investigate their stability and value in railway suicide prevention.

Methods: Cases were derived from the National Central Registry of person accidents on the German railway network (STABAG). The association of daytime, weekday and month with the mean number of suicides was analysed applying linear regression. Potential differences by observation period were assessed by adding observation period and the respective interaction terms into the linear regression. A 95% confidence interval for the mean number of suicides was computed using the t distribution.

Results: A total of 7,187 railway suicides were recorded within both periods: 4,102 (57%) in the first period (1995-1998) and 3,085 (43%) in the second (2005-2008). The number of railway suicides was highest on Mondays and Tuesdays in the first period with an average of 3.2 and 3.5 events and of 2.6 events on both days in the second period. In both periods, railway suicides were more common between 6:00 am and noon, and between 6:00 pm and midnight. Seasonality was only prominent in the period 1995-1998.

Conclusions: Over the course of two observation periods, the weekday and circadian patterns of railway suicides remained stable. Therefore, these patterns should be an integral part of railway suicide preventive measures, e.g. gatekeeper training courses.

Details

Title
Stable time patterns of railway suicides in Germany: comparative analysis of 7,187 cases across two observation periods (1995-1998; 2005-2008)
Author
Lukaschek, Karoline; Baumert, Jens; Erazo, Natalia; Ladwig, Karl-Heinz
Pages
124
Publication year
2014
Publication date
2014
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14712458
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
1501661964
Copyright
© 2014 Lukaschek et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.