Community-based health intervention and suicide prevention
evidence from Brazil
Keywords:
community-based interventions, suicide prevention, Family Health ProgramAbstract
This paper evaluates the impact of a community-based intervention on suicide prevention. To do so, we exploit heterogeneity in the program’s implementation across time, allowing us to investigate the program’s effect using an event study. We focused on the Family Health Program, which aims to provide primary health care to the population. We perform our analysis using municipality panel data. We employ a Difference-in-Differences strategy to assess the causal effect of the program. Our results indicate that FHP has a strong negative impact on suicide mortality rates and this effect is monotonic with the exposition time, especially in middle-aged individuals. Also, we found that more prolonged exposure to the program reduces suicide among women at younger ages. However, results indicate that the program is associated with increased hospitalization self-inflicted injuries rate in elderlies. We discuss different potential mechanisms for differential impacts by age and sex.
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