This study discusses variability in the spatial prevalence of suicide and parasuicide across small areas in London in relation to the social and demographic composition of their populations. The focus is on the relative importance in explaining suicidal outcomes of variables representing respectively social deprivation, psychiatric morbidity and anomie (or community fragmentation), and of differentiation in the effects of these factors across sub-populations. There is strong evidence for such contextual effects—namely, varying effects of these socio-economic factors according to geographical setting—as well as for differential associations by age group, sex and type of outcome (suicide vs parasuicide).
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