Why focus on Preventing Suicide Globally?
Suicide is a serious global public health problem. More than 800,000 people worldwide die from suicide every year. For each suicide there are many more people who attempt suicide every year. Suicides are preventable. Multiple sectors, including health, education, labor, agriculture, business and the media have a role to play in suicide prevention.
Recent reports from the UK note that there were
6,188 recorded in the U.K. in 2015, an average of almost 17 a day, or two every three hours. In the U.K., suicide is the
leading cause of death among women under 35 and men under 50. The World Health Organization estimates that 788,000 people died by suicide globally in 2015. Somewhere in the world, someone takes their life every 40 seconds. And despite advances in science and a growing political and popular focus on mental health, recorded suicides in the U.K. have declined only slightly over the past few decades, from 14.7 per 100,000 people 36 years ago to 10.9 in 2015.
The Center for Disease Control (Washington, DC, USA) is a resource of much information on Suicide not only in the USA, but also globally.
The World Health Organization has an up-to-date resource in multiple languages: Arabic, English, Finnish, French, Japanese, Russian, Spanish This link brings you to the latest information by country - note: the highest mortality rate from Suicide is the European region.