Did suicide risk differ by marital status for men and women?

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The study used a large nationally representative sample to examine the relationship between marital status and suicide risk, including whether the association differed by sex. Researchers applied Cox proportional hazards regression models to National Longitudinal Mortality Study data from the 1979–1989 follow-up, adjusting for age, sex, race, education, family income, and region of residence.

In the full sample, divorced people had a higher suicide risk than married people. Divorced and separated people were over twice as likely to die by suicide as married people (relative risk [RR] = 2.08, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.58–2.72). Being single or widowed was not significantly associated with suicide risk.

When the data were stratified by sex, divorced men had over twice the suicide risk of married men (RR = 2.38, CI 1.77–3.20). Among women, there were no statistically significant differences in suicide risk across marital status categories.

The authors concluded that marital status, especially divorce, had a strong adjusted association with suicide mortality only among men. They suggested that stratifying samples by key demographic or social characteristics could yield more accurate results in suicide epidemiology, and that failing to control for relevant socioeconomic variables or combining men and women in the same models could produce misleading results.