Talk:List of countries by suicide rate

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[edit] Cleanup needed

this definitely needs to be cleaned up.--Alhutch 11:15, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] There is no way this is accurate.

There is no way this is accurate. If it is not the title of the article should be changed to list of suicide rates per country according to WHO figures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.62.100.127 (talk) 04:40, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WHO publishes suicide rates

WHO publishes suicide rates: http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/ -- 80.62.236.56 10:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jordan?

Jordan is listed as having zero suicides yet many suicide bombers come out of Jordan every single year? Unless a better statistic is found they should be removed from the list.


[edit] Proposal

  • These numbers are totally wrong compared to the WHO website. The website breaks it down by "year for which numbers were last available" and by gender. But, for example, where the article states Japan is 5th in the world with a suicide rate of 33.2 people per 100000, the WHO's lists it as 11th at 50.6.
  • Here's what I propose: List all of the countries on the WHO website, but add the total number of suicides (summing men and women) as another column and then sort in descending order by that column. This gives us a lot more information and also allows us to see the countries with the LOWEST suicide rates.
  • In that case the page will have to be moved to something like "List of suicide rates by country." --will 18:06, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Stats

Will, referring to Cuba - The Pan American Health organization, where the 18.2 stats are taken from, have presumably used this [1]. 24.5 men /100,000 + 12.0 women/100,100 = 18.25 average per 100,000 people. They've divided by 200,000 for the total to get 18.2, whilst you've divided by 100,000 to get 36.5. --Zleitzen 14:45, 26 May 2006 (UTC) )

  • I was curious about this, but I'm afraid I still don't understand it. Presumably (and I don't actually know this) they figure out these numbers by: (total number of males who committed suicide)/population = male rate and (total number of females who committed suicide)/population = female rate.--will 17:18, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Oh wait, unless the number for "population" is actually separated by gender (i.e. total number of males committing suicide)/(population of males). That must be it, I'll work on changing this. Thanks! --will 17:18, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Well... I just had this thought then: if the imediately above statement is true, then the "total" rate should incorporate the male/female ratio. Which for Cuba is 1.0 and fine, but for someplace like Armenia is 0.87 and could be a serious factor. [2]. Or we just need to find the total number and the total population. Anyway, for now I think I'm going to remove the total because I think it's contentious information.--will 17:44, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
You're right Will, it's not clear if they've separated by gender. I had a hunt for how they've identified the stat but couldn't find anything.--Zleitzen 15:19, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The calculation of suicide rates

I wrote an e-mail to the WHO asking how these numbers were calculated and recieved a response from Dr. Alexandra Fleischmann, copied here for our benefit:

The male suicide rate is calculated by dividing the absolute number of male suicides by the population of males for a given country. The same is done for females. Also, the same is done for the total rate (absolute number of male and female suicides divided by the population of males and females in a given country), which can be found in the country charts at the following address: http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/index.html

The address has a pdf for each country that includes a "total" value which is not present in the tables referenced in the above discussions. I'm just getting up the courage to go through each countries pdf -- I haven't found a table with the totals in yet. --will 01:19, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uncomparable Rates

There are countries in this list that have statistics from 2002 and countries with statistics from 1984. I guess an eight years gap make this rating somewhat absurd and unnacurate. I think this article should be revised or deleted because there is no way to know how much it can be misleading.

As long as there are caveats, the information is still valid. There is no reason why suicide rates should vary dramatically over time.

Exile (talk) 21:11, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Any questions to: ruiferreira89@hotmail.com

As with any information collected by any agency, reputable or not, the user has to use some degree of intelligence in its interpretation like you did, by using the year to assess which stats are comparable and which are not. The fact that some countries don't report how many annual suicides occur does not make this article (which is merely relaying information provided) inaccurate or misleading - it's the country-specific statistic that may or may not be skewed. Personally, I find the year column (which represents the last time that country's government provided suicide information to the WHO) very revealing in itself.
This article is based on the most current information available at the WHO (you can see the references directly by following the links provided in the article). If you know of another source of possible information then please, add it as a reference or pass it on and I'd be happy to look at it and try to incorporate the information. But as for now, this is certainly a notable topic with references, perhaps the only ones that exist.--Will.i.am 04:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Accuracy

This information is at best wildly inaccurate. For example, Japan is listed with 74.3 suicides pr. 100000 males in 2003, but the latest numbers from WHO (available here [3]) states that the rate was 35.2 in 2002. I doubt that the suicide rate in Japan more than doubled from one year to the next.

It has not doubled, that was vandalism which has since been reverted.--Will.i.am 09:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WHO numbers are inaccurate

WHO numbers are inaccurate, is there another provider for statistics? The WHO website in it's entirety is strongly U.S biased. -guy

I strong agree with you, "guy".
Even I noticed a growing number of depressed men around me. =(
88.105.57.112 (talk) 18:09, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ratio of male/female

It would be additionally interesting to have a column in the data which is the ratio of male to female suicides in that country. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.33.49.251 (talk) 18:04, August 24, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Total suicide rate. By country

Is there a table for the total suicide rate by country at the WHO site or elsewhere? Or is that column being kept up from the individual country reports at WHO?:

I have been playing around with an HTML to wiki table converter here:

With this table:

With some more time I may be able to convert the WHO table to a clean wiki table almost instantly. I am working on some intermediate steps to clean out the extraneous, unnecessary formatting. Also. to change the table set up enough to avoid copyright problems. Maybe change the column order.

There are more converters in the external links section of this page:

[edit] United Kingdom 2004- Outdated

I think the data for the UK from 2004 is outdated and inaccurate to this present time.

From what I've heard, suicide rates among British men are on the increase while women remain fairly static.

I've come across a news article saying that Wales has suicide rates "5 times higher" than in England. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4673920.stm 88.105.57.112 (talk) 18:08, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the long term trend for suicide rates in the UK is DOWN

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/suicide0305.pdf

Exile (talk) 21:16, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

what about Iran? its from over 15 years ago an alot has happened since then. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.60.0.160 (talk) 03:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


[edit] China

The People's Republic of China is listed 3 times in the table, each with different values. Someone familiar with the article may want to investigate and pick the right source. Tyro (talk) 02:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The source is the same for all. ☆ CieloEstrellado 14:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] eurostat

It is possible to update rates for EU with rates from eurostat (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page?_pageid=1996,39140985&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&screen=detailref&language=en&product=Yearlies_new_population&root=Yearlies_new_population/C/C2/C27/C22/tps00122), that are more recent ? --Jklamo (talk) 13:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)