RAPID RESPONSES FROM BMJ.COM

doi:10.1136/bmjusa.01050003

BMJ, doi: 10.1136/bmjusa.01050003, (Published 5 September 2002)

Letters

RAPID RESPONSES FROM BMJ.COM

As of April 9th, four e-letters had been posted on bmj.com in response to the paper by Agerbo et al. Two are reproduced below in abbreviated form. $---$ Editor

An alternative explanation for higher suicide rates among the rich

Suicide and high-income patients: a misleading link

An alternative explanation for higher suicide rates among the rich

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

This article originally appeared in BMJ USA

EDITOR $---$ Agerbo et al fail to offer the most logical, albeit politically incorrect, explanation for their finding that suiciderates may be directly rather than inversely correlated with wealth:that the rich, being more competent in general, are specificallyso in ending theirlives.

Frank de Zurbaran, Emeritus professor of psychiatry.
Ross University, Commonwealth of Dominica kraepelin@altavista.com

Suicide and high-income patients: a misleading link

EDITOR $---$ The findings by Agerbo et al in their case-control study of suicide in the Danish population seem to muddy the establishedlink between low socioeconomic status and increased risk of suicide.In the United Kingdom the highest risk is in social class 5 (unskilledoccupations), followed by social class 1 (professional occupations),and lowest for social class 3 (skilled occupations- manual).¹

Agerbo et al focus on one easy-to-measure aspect of socioeconomic status at the expense of all others $---$ namely, income. Theyconclude from their retrospective study that in those detectedto have a past history of mental illness, those . . . [Full text of this article]