Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz wasn’t kidding when he said that Europe’s aggressive austerity policies were “a mutual suicide pact”. His 2012 prediction wasn’t just metaphorical, according to the Journal of Social Sciences and Medicine.

It’s paper, “The Impact of Fiscal Austerity on Suicide Mortality: Evidence across the ‘Eurozone Periphery‘, examined the impact of fiscal austerity on suicide mortality across the Eurozne. The result was astounding, proving that there is an undeniable link between short-, medium- and long-run suicide-increasing effects on males in the age group from 65-89 years.

It isn’t just the elderly that are suffering either as young males between the ages of 10 and 24 years are aso committing suicide in growing numbers. Between 2011 and 2012, more than 6,000 young males in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain committed suicide. Researchers focused on nations where the debt crises necessitated the most severe, crushing forms of austerity.

The paper, published by economists Nikolaos Antonakakis and Alan Collins, found that a 1% drop in teh GDP growth rate was linked to a 0.9% increase in suicide rates across the spectrum.