Lockdown has not led to more Queensland suicides, research finds

Dr Leske said they found no overall change in the rate of suicides compared with the past five years.

“There was both no increase or decrease in the rate of suicide over that period, it seemed to be unaffected overall by the lockdowns,” he said.

“We found that there was no change in some motives or triggers for suspected suicide that you might expect, such as domestic violence, recent unemployment or relationship breakdown.”

However, researchers found COVID-19 was mentioned in 36 police reports of the cases they studied, suggesting it had a partial role in a handful of cases.

“The coding that we did for the cases meant the one person could have multiple codes, so someone may have lost their job due to the lockdowns, which would…