Main findings
As an underexplored phenomenon, this study aimed to assess suicide events in Nigeria by retrospectively looking into variables derived from online news portal reports. According to this study, a total of 350 suicide reports from 10 news portals were identified between January 2010 and December 2019. The mean age of the cases of suicide was 36.33 (15.48) with 50% below the age of 34, which signifies an early loss of productive lives. This rate of early loss is confirmed in a study about suicide in Turkey, where they found that people aged 15–34 had the highest suicide rate.20 In Bangladesh, such early suicide has also been reported before the age of 30 years.18 21 From our study, we found evidence that people above the age of 34 are equally likely to die by suicide as people below 34 years. This confirms a study in America, where people aged 45 to 59 had the highest suicide rate in 2010 as compared with suicide among those between 15 and 25.22
Previous studies have revealed that suicide mortality rates vary by age group, gender and regions.23 Consistent with previous research and in accordance with the Global Burden of Disease (2016) report data, men had higher rates of suicide across regions and countries at all time points, and for all age groups except for among those aged 15 to 19.24 Our study found that the majority of completed suicide cases were males (80.6%) and a greater percentage (79.6%) of all suicide reports in the country were also males. This reveals that males are more likely to die by suicide than their female counterparts. Male predominance can be explained by a few factors which include ignoring the need to seek help for mental health. Men are also less likely to seek and accept help or treatment.2 6 25 However, an opposite gender distribution was reported in Bangladesh where suicide reports were more among females than males, hence, there is a different gender ratio across the South-Asian countries.6 18 20 26
Comparing the demographic profile with the methods of suicide, it was observed that the hanging and poisoning methods of suicide were more prevalent across most of the variables. Hanging, in particular, was found to be predominant among males, married and separated people, people living in rural, semi-urban and urban areas, people across the social classes, other occupations apart from students and people living in every other region apart from North Central. In addition, completed suicide cases from most of the unknown risk factors, and the known factors including financial constraint, depression and others were by hanging, and the majority of completed suicides by hanging were done at home. These further validate the increasing global trend of use of hanging for suicide.21 26 Mars and colleagues27 found that hanging was the predominant method in Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. Other methods, including poisoning and firearms, were found to be predominant in Cameroon, Egypt, Malawi and Tanzania. However, poisoning was reportedly predominant among such variables as being female, unmarried, students and people in North Central. A high percentage of completed suicide by poisoning cases was caused by marital and relationship discord and familial disharmony.
With respect to the risk factors, aside from about 28% of the cases whose risk factors were either unknown or not mentioned, financial constraints (20.1%), marital/relationship discord (10.4%) and familial disharmony (9.5%) made the top three risk factors in succession. For marital status, the study revealed that married people are more likely to die by suicide than unmarried, divorced or separated people. Establishing a link between some suicide variables and marital status, it can be deduced that many married people have such financial challenges that could lead them to die by suicide especially by hanging and in their homes. Similar risk factors have been reported in a similar socioeconomic contexts such as in Bangladesh where marital discord, familial disharmony and sexual harassment are reported as prominent risk factors.18 21 26 There have also been reports of other risk factors for suicide and suicide attempts in Africa including physical health problems, psychiatric disorder or symptoms, drug and alcohol use/abuse, interpersonal and social difficulties, and socioeconomic problems.27
It was revealed from our studies that Nigerian news portals do not sensitise their readers and the entire public to the risk factors and preventive strategies of suicide. Suicide is a preventable phenomenon. For instance, the Korean government has developed a National Mental Health plan, Suicide Prevention Centre and prevention education projects for the young, and also introduced media guidance to reduce inappropriate reporting and to promote awareness of the protective role of the media.28 Despite the preventive tendency for suicide, governments and policy-makers have remained apathetic about prioritising preventative interventions especially among vulnerable populations. The country is yet to develop, implement and evaluate a comprehensive and sustainable multisectoral suicide prevention plan, for the populace as a whole and for vulnerable persons in particular, as recommended by WHO.29
Limitations
Suicide in Nigeria remains an understudied social issue. To the authors’ best knowledge, this study represents the first comprehensive review of top and leading Nigerian news portals, for a 10-year period, on their style of suicide reporting. For this study, 10 online news portals within the period of 2010 and 2019 were scrutinised; hence, the study findings may be perceived as uncritical to the true picture of suicidal variables and their reporting by news portals, but they will trigger further research and contribute to the body of knowledge about suicide in Nigeria. Data were collected and scrutinised from online news portals; hence, the source of data is not strictly scientific. To understand how risk factors may be connected to suicidal behaviour, qualitative studies are needed to understand the complexity of suicidal behaviour and the sociocultural context in which these happen. Cautious interpretation is needed to generalise the results, and further larger-scale studies would help to fill up the huge information gap on suicide research in Nigeria.