"Suicide CARE" Is Proactively Required to Reduce the Suicide Death Rate in the Identified Hotspots in South Korea.

Abstract

Lee et al1 have reported remarkable findings on the spatiotemporal patterns of suicides in South Korea from 2009 to 2019. Here, the age-adjusted suicide rate per 100 000 people has gradually and continuously decreased from 29.1 to 22.0. Using the geographic information system, among the 229 regions, 27 hotspots were identified or detected from emerging hotspot analyses of the age-standardized suicide rate in South Korea. In addition, the 27 hotspots were divided into 2 new spots: 1 persistent spot, 23 sporadic spots, and 1 oscillating spot. However, the reason why the 27 hotspots were identified in South Korea over 11 years has not been thoroughly explained. Moreover, the sociocultural factors that contributed to the identification or detection of these hotspots were not explained. Despite these limitations, the findings suggest that these regions are potentially important management areas for reducing suicide rates from the viewpoint of public mental health policy in South Korea.