Unemployment and recession add to the death toll from suicide, murder and heart attacks but cut the number killed in road accidents, according to the most comprehensive analysis so far of the health effects of economic downturn.

Researchers at Oxford University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analysed the effect of economic changes on mortality rates in 26 European countries from 1970 to 2007. Their conclusions are published online in the Lancet medical ­journal.