Short height linked to increased suicide risk

Shorter men may be more likely than their taller peers to commit suicide - suggesting, researchers say, that various factors related to growth and development also affect suicide risk later in life.

In a study of records for nearly 1.3 million Swedish men, the investigators found that for every 2 inches a man gained in height, his suicide risk dipped by 9 percent. Overall, the shortest men in the study were about twice as likely as the tallest men to commit suicide.

A few previous studies have uncovered a similar height-suicide relationship among men, with some suggestion that income and social class explain the link; children who grow up disadvantaged may have both poorer growth and a higher suicide rates as adults.

But in the current study, neither a man's education nor his parents' socioeconomic class significantly affected the link between height and suicide risk.

Still, the findings support the notion that factors in childhood that affect growth and development may be involved in adulthood suicide risk, according to the study authors, led by Dr. Patrik K. E. Magnusson of Uppsala University in Sweden.

The researchers based their findings on records for almost 1.3 million Swedish men who registered for the military draft between 1968 and 1999. The men's conscription records were linked with public birth, death and census records.

Overall, the researchers found, just over 3,000 men committed suicide, with the risk dipping as a man's height climbed. Factors such as year of birth, education, parents' incomes and a record of psychiatric illness at the time of conscription did not explain the height-suicide link.

Magnusson and his colleagues do, however, point to several potential explanations. Psychological stress and a troubled family life, they note, may both impair a child's growth and raise the risk of suicide later on. There is also some evidence that poor weight gain in infancy is a risk factor for suicide in adulthood.

On the other hand, adulthood factors could also be important. Marriage, the study authors point out, tends to reduce the risk of suicide, and shorter men may be less likely to marry - though in this study, marital status had only a weak effect on the height-suicide relationship.

An alternative explanation, according to Magnusson's team, is that short men suffer some level of stigmatization or discrimination that makes them more vulnerable to suicidal behavior.

SOURCE: American Journal of Psychiatry, July 2005.