ABSTRACT
The national suicide rate in Sri Lanka may be the highest in Asia. The complex relationships between migration and mental health, and specifically migration and suicide. The sharp increase in suicide rates in Sri Lanka is probably not explicable in terms of any single factor or identifiable cluster of factors, but is most likely linked to a profound disruption of the social environment due to the pyramiding of many facets of social change after the 1940s. The rates of suicide have climbed over the years for both males and females in all age groups except the oldest, and the increase in rates is most marked in the years of the late teens and twenties. The general association in Sri Lanka of high rates of suicide for both sexes with the presence of large proportions of in-migrants and the accompanying skewed sex ratios suggests a causal linkage between migration and social disruption, leading to high and rising suicide rates.
