THE FREQUENCY OF SUICIDE IN INDIVIDUAL DANISH BIRTH COHORTS, 1922-1991

In recent years many suicidologists have based their epidemiological s tudies on suicide on theories assuming that people born within the sam e period of time will follow the same suicidal patterns throughout the ir lives, and that variations in the annual rate of suicide will, ther efore, reflect systematic differences between cohorts. Cohort analysis carried out on Danish data showed, however, that although some differ ences could be found as to the course of events during the life span o f the cohorts and also when the material was adjusted for sex, no sign ificant differences could be found between various birth cohorts in th e total rates of suicide. The authors argue that the reason for this i s that a cohort effect is only one of three dimensions of an analytica l tool, namely, Age-Period-Cohort (APC) analysis, and that the balance between the three effects changes over time.