Study links suicide to lower intelligence

Sweden: Young men who perform well in intelligence tests are at less risk of committing suicide than those with lower scores…

Sweden: Young men who perform well in intelligence tests are at less risk of committing suicide than those with lower scores, Swedish scientists have said.

In a study assessing the link between intellect and suicide, researchers from the Karolinska Institute found that men who had the lowest scores were three times more likely to take their own life.

"There is a strong inverse association between intelligence-test scores and suicide," Prof Finn Rasmussen, an associate at the institute, said in the report, published in the British Medical Journal.

He and his colleagues analysed test scores of 987,308 Swedish men when they entered the military and recorded the number of suicides among them over 26 years. Nearly 3,000 took their own lives.

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"Better performance on the tests was associated with a reduced risk of suicide," he added.

Reuters