Drinking coffee reduces suicide risk by half

Coffee may lower suicide risk in men and women by 50 percent, a recent study by Harvard researchers has found.

Reviewing data from three large-scale US studies, the team from the Harvard School of Public Health compared the risk of suicide for adults who consumed two to four caffeinated cups per day with that of non-coffee drinkers, those who drank much less coffee per day and people who chose decaf.

Comparatively, the suicide risk for those who drank two to four cups per day was about 50 percent less than the risk for subjects in the other groups, the Huffington Post reported.

The total sample included more than 200,000 participants, who were studied for time spans of at least 16 years.

The team's findings are, perhaps, not surprising since caffeinated coffee has been linked to a lower risk of depression among women in the past.

In a 2011 study, also conducted by Harvard researchers, women who drank coffee were shown to have a 15 percent reduced risk of depression as compared to non-coffee drinkers.

The research is published in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry.