Reviewer's report
Title:Evaluation of the Female Suicidal Deaths Between 2005-2011 in Van City
of Turkey
Version:2Date:20 June 2014
Reviewer: Charlotte Björkenstam
Reviewer's report:
Review of the manuscript “Evaluation of the Female Suicidal Deaths Between
2005-2011 in Van City of Turkey”
Major Compulsory Revisions
This is an urgent subject. The authors aim to explore female suicides in Van city
in Turkey in concern to some of the patriarchal traditions, kuma, berdel and
honor murders. To improve the manuscript I would however like to see a
thorough revise of the aim/aims, and also, for the authors to go through the
manuscript and restructure in accordance. Many of my following comments are
based on the fact that I have a little difficulty to grasp the aim and see the main
thread.
It would also be of interest to the international reader to learn if the ICD-codes for
undetermined intent are used in Turkey (ICD-10:Y10-Y34).
A thorough passage of the English language is asked for.
Minor Compulsory Revisions
Background
Line 5, the authors refer to an article in Turkish, whereupon I couldn’t read it, but
the title confuses me as it says they were studying suicide attempts and the
authors refer to this article concerning suicide and regional differences between
the sexes, please clarify.
The background lacks a clearly stated aim in my opinion. As for now it says: “to
describe this important problem with technical and social parameters and to put
forward some recommendations for solution through analyzing the female
suicidal deaths in Van, a city located in eastern part of Turkey”. My
understanding is that “the problem” mentioned here is the mix up and
erroneously classifying of honor murders as suicides. Hence, “recommendations
for solution”, as of my interpretation, are solutions for this mix-up of diagnoses. If
correctly understood the manuscript does not, in my opinion, give any such
solutions. Please be more specific.
Method
The method section is unfortunately meagre and it would benefit from the authors
adding more detailed information on how many deaths they investigated, which
variables/socio-demographics that were available and how the authors planned
to perform the analyses. The aim should also be understandable from the
method section and as it is written now, nothing is mentioned about the
erroneously classified deaths (suicide instead of murder), please bear with me if I
misunderstood this!
Result
A first comment is that tables and figures should correspond well with the stated
aim and/or hypotheses. The first figure displays the age distribution, although I
find it interesting that so many were below the age of 15, a figure showing the
age distribution might not be necessarily, depending on what your hypotheses
are. Please think this thoroughly or be more specific in your writing.
Further, I have similar comments for table 1 where the authors show number of
female suicide cases by year, 2005-2011. Do they have a hypothesis about this?
Do they expect the number of cases to be lower or higher any particular year, did
something happen in the area/country that gave rise to a specific hypothesis? If
so, please specify and explain. Otherwise I can unfortunately not see the point
with this table.
Also regarding figure 2 and 3 the manuscript lack hypotheses about seasons and
moon phases.
Did the authors have any a priori hypotheses regarding number of suicides
during the different years? As suicide still is a pretty rare event it is natural for the
numbers to fluctuate from one year to another. What’s usually more interesting is
to look at trends over time.
Regarding moon phases and which month the death occurred, nothing is
mentioned about this in either the introduction or in the method section.
Discussion
It is customary to begin the discussion section with a brief summary of your
results. Instead here the authors begin with a reference to risk factors for suicide
attempts. Please rewrite.
Line 15, the authors talk about seasonal patterns of mortality and say that
seasonality is found almost in all countries, however the reference study is in
Bangladesh, it would be better to refer to the original articles by Crook N, Dyson
T. Data on scasonality of births and deaths. In: Chambers R, Longhurst R, Pacey
A (eds). Seasonal Dimensions to Rural Poverty. London: Frances Pinter. 1981,
pp.41-148, and
Sakamoto-Momlyama M. Seasonally in Human Mortality Tokyo: University of
Tokyo Press, 1977.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but the whole page 8 does not say anything that
is associated with the aim of the study. Please think this through. As far as I am
concerned the aim seems more to be a descriptive one, where the authors want
to describe socio-demographics and some circumstantial variables related to
each suicide case. If this is the case, please rewrite the aim and the other
sections where necessarily.
Starting on line 23, page 9, a lot is said about suicide methods, although this is
not stated as an aim.
Further, the conclusion does unfortunately not sum up the study and the authors
state, even though highly important, unfortunately less relevant under the current
structure of the manuscript, conclus
Level of interest: An article of limited interest
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
I declare that I have no competing interests