AHURI research investigates links between suicide and insecure housing

Suicide Prevention Australia has published a rapid research review undertaken by AHURI and commissioned by the National Suicide Prevention Taskforce on the links between housing related factors and suicide.

Overall, the available evidence shows the three main channels by which housing affects suicide:

• protracted financial stress due to the cost of housing
• loss of ontological security  (i.e. loss of sense of self or identity) due to eviction, insecure housing and homelessness
• the impacts of adverse life events on children and young people on their present and future mental health.

The research review recognises a number of interventions that may reduce the impact of housing on mental health (and therefore reduce the potential incident of suicide) such as:

• developing programs to prevent evictions (e.g. subsidies for people at risk of foreclosure or mortgage stress)
• sustaining programs to enhance universal social protection and strengthen population-wide suicide prevention measures during economic crises
• work with banks to identify borrowers who may be at risk of defaulting on their mortgage and link them with appropriate supports
• regulate the private rental market to promote it as an affordable, appropriate and stable type of tenure.

The AHURI research review identified studies from the US and Europe that investigated the connections between foreclosures, evictions and suicide, including one study which examined 20 European countries. Unfortunately no relevant Australian studies were found.