Reviewer's report
Title:Evaluation of the Female Suicidal Deaths Between 2005-2011 in Van City
of Turkey
Version:5Date:22 September 2014
Reviewer: Annette Beautrais
Reviewer's report:
The authors have made substantial efforts to meet the reviewers’ comments. I
have the following comments of the revised manuscript:
1. The new title of the paper is better but still needs changes – I suggest delete
‘the’ and change ‘suicidal ‘ to ‘suicide’ and change ‘evaluation’ to “A descriptive
study” so it reads: A Descriptive Study of Female Suicide Deaths Between
2005-2011 in Van City of Turkey - Minor Essential Revision
2. The addition of more information in the Introduction about the culture of
marriage is very helpful. However, while the Report of the Van Women’s
Association ( page4. Line 28) provides useful context it is necessary to make
clear the origin of the quoted ’causes’ of female suicide: Are they hypothesised
causes? Are they derived from studies or are they opinions? Are they from
interviews with women who have made suicide attempts? Major Required
Revision
3. In the Introduction (pages 5-6) there is still confusion about the risk factors for
female suicide – are the quoted risk factors derived from studies of female
suicide internationally, or from Turkish studies, excluding Van?
4. The last paragraph of the Introduction should state what this study hopes to
achieve which is different from the contextual information provided in the
Introduction and which will add to current knowledge. Major required revision.
5. In the Methods Section, the first two paragraphs labelled, I and II, do not
belong to this section. Paragraph I would be more appropriate as the final
paragraph in the Introduction; Paragraph II does not state succinct hypotheses
and would be better positioned as part of the Discussion section. The Methods
section really only starts at the current Paragraph III. I am still not clear if this sis
a consecutive series - or how the cases were selected? Major required revisions.
6. Results. The major points are not conveyed clearly. As I see it, the major
results relate to the youth and marital status of the suicides (not to the methods
of suicide). It is important to the thesis of the study that the paper convey how
many of the 9 under 15 year old suicide victims were married. Similarly, to the
extent that having children is usually regarded as a factor which protects against
suicide in females, it would be salient to have a table which shows the
distribution of age by number of children. I would therefore suggest that the major
results table show age x marital status x number of children. Further, age groups
can be aggregated after age 40 – there are only 3 deaths in the older age groups
so restrict to one age group aggregating all who are aged 40+. Method could be
described in text: it is not the major point of the study and the table as it is
currently includes method categories in which there is only one death: it is not
helpful to tabulate these data. Figure 1 is redundant: The data are contained
within Table 1. Major required revisions.
7. The Discussion should focus on conveying the major findings which relate to
the extreme youth and marital status of these young girls, and offer potential
explanations and ways to address the problem. The discussions about method
and location of the death are superfluous and detract attention from what I
believe the authors intend to be the major focus of the paper. The content is
essentially there within the Discussion section: it needs to be trimmed and
re-focussed. Minor Essential Revisions
Level of interest: An article whose findings are important to those with closely
related research interests
Quality of written English: Not suitable for publication unless extensively edited
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