This article is dedicated to the cities with the highest suicide rate per capita in 2018, as the suicide is one of the serious but preventable issues related to mental health.
Let’s see first some facts about suicides here. Around 800,000 people commit suicide annually in the world, also being the main cause of death among younger population (15-19 years). In general, suicide rates are more prone to happen in rural areas throughout the world, triggered by many factors that impact the quality of life such as isolation, poverty, hard living conditions, etc. It is also worth mentioning that suicide rates among males are (much) higher than suicide rates in women in general.
In countries like Russia, for example (being among the countries with the highest suicidal rates in the world), some of the main reasons for male predominance in suicides is alcohol consumption. Seemingly for the same reason, the most of suicide happen in Belarus with the suicide rate even 2.5 times higher in rural than urban parts of the country. In the highest suicidal state of the US (and you can check which the 16 Highest Suicidal States in America in 2018 are), Wyoming, the most suicides happen in rural areas and small isolated towns as well.
It is also an interesting fact that Europe is the region with the highest suicide rates (especially Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic region), with Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Latvia among the highest suicidal countries in Europe.
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There was no particular statistics to be found on the matter of cities with highest suicide rate per capita, so we have applied other tactics here. We have gone through the regions of the world that have the highest rates of suicides first. The data for that was obtained from World Health Organization from the categories crude suicide rates and age-standardized rates. We also used OECD’s data on suicide rates in countries they have covered, as well as World Population Review’s data. Then when we have targeted the highest regions we have sought for particular countries and cities within them that have the highest suicide rates. And although the majority of data represents the cumulative results in some longer period of time, the trends are more or less the same for 2018 as well.
But then after checking the highest suicidal countries (and since it is not our subject now, you can check the data on highest suicidal country in 30 Countries with the Highest Suicide Rates in the World ), we have tried to compare the suicide rates in cities and within the country in general, since, as we have already pointed out, most suicides actually happen in rural areas. So the conclusion – not all the countries with highest suicide rates would also have the highest suicidal cities in the world.
Although we are talking about cities here, the vast majority of suicide in the countries, in general, is done by people living in rural areas as we have noted. But on the other hand, there are many “popular” interesting and mysterious places where suicides take place. Among them, apart from famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, one such place is Aokigahara forest in Japan, which seems to be among the favorite places to take suicide. Many people who decide to take their lives choose this destination, and hence the number of suicide in Aokigahara forest is rising. Therefore many signs saying stuff like “Your life is a precious gift from your parents” have been put, but it seems with no positive effect.
On the more bright side, one of the least suicidal countries is surprisingly (or not) Saudi Arabia, followed by Syria and Lebanon, Kuwait, Oman, and Jamaica, as the data from 2012 suggests. But, more interestingly, countries that are marked as the “happiest countries” in the world are showing a high rate of suicides. Such as the example of Switzerland where around 1,000 suicides are committed annually. There are also the Nordic countries like Finland or Denmark which also show a high percentage of suicides.
Anyways, putting countries aside, let’s see which those cities with the highest suicide rate per capita in 2018 are:
17. St. Petersburg, Russia
Even though there are certainly some less known cities in Russia with high suicide rates, we have been provided with the figure of 17.8 suicides per 100.000 people in St. Petersburg, which is a figure just above the average global suicide rates. Nevertheless, Russia is among top countries in the world with the cities with the highest suicide rate per capita in 2018.
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