Clinical and social characteristics of male parasuicides: variation by employment status and duration of unemployment.

In this study employed and unemployed male parasuicides were compared on a number of clinical, sociodemographic and other characteristics in order to establish which, if any, were significantly related to employment status. A further analysis examined variation in personal attributes by duration of unemployment. The unemployed group was found to contain a higher proportion of individuals who were unmarried, living outside the family, of lower social class, given a diagnosis of abnormal personality, misusing drugs habitually, in trouble with the police and with a criminal record. Comparisons within the unemployed group showed that age and civil state varied significantly by duration of unemployment, but no linear trend was evident. Longer durations of unemployment were associated significantly with personality diagnosis and receipt of psychotropic drug treatment. Within the limits dictated by the study design (cross-sectional, without general population controls), the findings are discussed in terms of their compatibility with the causal or self-selection models of the unemployment-parasuicide relationship.