Suicide rates in Japan have jumped in the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly among women and children, even though they fell in the first wave when the government offered generous handouts to people, Reuters reported, quoting the findings of a survey.

The July-October suicide rate rose 16 per cent from the same period a year earlier, a stark reversal of the February-June decline of 14pc, according to the study by researchers at Hong Kong University and Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology.

“Unlike normal economic circumstances, this pandemic disproportionately affects the psychological health of children, adolescents and females (especially housewives),” the authors wrote in the study published on Friday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.