title: Emerging correlations between measures of population well-being, suicide and homicide: a look at global and Australian data.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Our aim was (1) to examine global and Australian data with a view to determining the presence of an inverse relationship between suicide and homicide rates, and (2) to examine global Human Development Index (HDI) values and suicide and homicide rates, with a view to determining any statistical relationship.
  
  
  METHODS
  Suicide and homicide rates and HDI values were available for 102 countries, and suicide and homicide rates were available for the states and territories of Australia. The three data sets had non-normal distributions, and the non-parametric Spearman's ρ was used for correlation statistics with α = 0.05.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We found a weak, statistically significant inverse relationship between the suicide and homicide rates of 102 countries (ρ = -0.244, p = 0.014). No relationship was established for the Australian values, however. As anticipated, we found a significant negative correlation between homicide and HDI values. We unexpectedly demonstrated a positive correlation between suicide rates and HDI values.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The notion that suicide and homicide have an inverse relationship now has some scientific support; but additional research is warranted to characterise and explain this relationship. The unexpected finding of a positive correlation between suicide rates and HDI values requires further examination.
authors.affiliation: Medical Student, School of Medicine, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia.
authors.forename: Adrian Ys
authors.initials: AY
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Saxby
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pridmore
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia / Q000453:epidemiology; D006708:Homicide / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D011788:Quality of Life / Q000523:psychology*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
keywords: HDI; homicide; statistics; suicide; well-being