Prevalence of Common Methods of Suicide among Iranian Men; a Systematic Review

Suicide is one of the public health problems with a high rate worldwide. Sex is a risk factor forsuccessful suicide, making it the seventh leading cause of death in men in the United States. Based on theincreasing suicide rate in Iran, we aimed to investigate the common methods of suicide in Iranian men.

This study is a systematic review with subgroup analysis based on the prevalence of methods ofsuicide in Iranian men during 2009-2019. Specific keywords based on medical subject headings (MeSH) weresearched in Iranian and international databases including PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, SID, and MagIranby designing a search strategy. Selected studies were reviewed using the study evaluation tool. For data analysis,STATA software version 14 was used. Also, heterogeneity studies by Q and I2 statics were assessed.

In the first phase, 529 studies were extracted, and finally, data were extracted from 19 studies. Becauseof the heterogeneity of the studies, meta-analysis was not possible and the final results were extracted based onsubgroup analysis. Drug abuse was the most common method of suicide and the use of firearms was the leastprevalent among Iranian men.

Currently, the most common method of suicide in Iranian men is drug abuse. Therefore, it isrecommended to design preventive interventions based on gender and take into account commonly availablemethods.