The full exclusion/inclusion criteria for the study are
presented in Appendix A. The review encompassed
both individual-level and population-level studies.
Given that intimate relationships are a social
phenomenon with potentially different meanings in
different cultural contexts, it was important to
ensure the review was specific to countries with
some broad cultural and economic similarities. The
decision was therefore taken to include only studies
of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) countries with a broadly
European cultural heritage.
Screening identified a total of 52 articles whose
abstracts suggested potential relevance. Of these
articles, 23 were excluded once full text was
accessed, on the grounds of presenting insufficient
inferential statistics or details of the statistical test
used, or for not answering our research questions
(e.g. papers which examined mediating factors
associated with suicide following divorce among
men and women, but did not compare rates
between men and women). Subsequently, 29 papers
met the inclusion criteria of the systematic review
and have been included in the study (see Appendices
B and C). As noted above, it was important for
searching to encompass any breakdown in
relationship, regardless of the legal status of the
relationship. However, all the papers selected for the
review did in fact use the more formal categories of
divorce and/or separation.