The article I have chosen is entitled: Family and Household Formations and Suicide in the United States. The article in question was authored by Justin T. Denney and appeared in the Journal of Marriage and Family. As suggested, the article attempts to investigate the role of detailed living arrangements on the individual risk of suicide, using data on 825,462 adults from the National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality File.
The article begins by explaining the reasoning behind the study: that most studies on suicide have focused on the larger societal factors and their impact on suicide, while very few have looked into individual family make up and living arrangements.
Setting up his methods, the author explains that the data set includes 825,462 adults in 446,519 households interviewed between 1986 and 1996 that are linked to 1,166 suicides through 2002.
The results of the study, conducted by Denney, largely back-up previous beliefs and studies on the subject. In particular, those living in a marital union are significantly less at risk from suicide, while those who are married and also live with their children are even less susceptible to suicide. In addition, while living with children and other relatives provides some reduced risk of suicide, marriage is by far the greatest factor. The other major finding of the study is that adults living with unrelated adults were slightly more at risk of suicide. This, the author concludes, suggests that protecting oneself from suicide is about more than just simply increasing immediate social ties.
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