Weight loss surgery and suicide risk

Very fat people sometimes have surgery to make their stomachs smaller and stop them eating so much. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh studied 16,683 people who had had weight-loss surgery between 1995 and 2004. By 2006 31 of these people had killed themselves, a rate of 14 per 10,000 men per year and 5 per 10,000 women - a rate substantially higher than that for other men (2.5 per 10,000) and women (0.6 per 10,000). The researchers were unclear why more people should kill themselves after weight-loss surgery although previous studies have shown that people who have the operation are more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety beforehand.