Our list of top 10 most suicidal countries in the world definitely consists of countries burdened with some serious social problems, which make living in them quite depressing for some social groups. If you are interested in which countries have their younger parts of population depressed the most, check out our list of 10 Countries with the Highest Youth Suicide Rates in theWorld.
According to the World Health Organization “Every 40 seconds a person dies by suicide somewhere in the world”. That claim is derived from a statistic that over 800,000 suicides are committed every year. Considering the numbers, it is quite worrying that only 28 countries have a national suicide prevention strategy. Only 60 countries, members of WHO, have what is considered a good quality data for estimates of theirs suicide rates. More than 78 percent of suicides in 2015, were committed in low and middle-income countries. Almost every third suicide, is a pesticide self-poisoning, while hanging and firearms are also common methods. Known risk factors are mental disorders, especially depression and alcohol use, but many people kill themselves as a reaction to a stressful event, such as losing a job, breaking up/getting divorced, and getting diagnosed with terminal illness, without a prior diagnosis of depression. There is a claim, that can be found frequently on the internet that 80 to 90 percent of suicide cases had depression, some even say over 90 percent, it is as if that estimated number is growing, because it is unacceptable for it to be less than 100 percent. According to American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the number is over 50 percent, and if alcoholics who are depressed are also counted the number is over 75 percent.
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Suicide rates for men are on average about four times as big as suicide rates for women. Usuall follow up to that is that women have twice as many attempted suicides as men. And the explanation for that is, that they use less effective methods than men because they think about how they will look afterward. However, only about 5 percent of attempted suicides, are actually attempts at suicide, and in fact are attempts of getting attention, in order to find the solution to the problem, while those who kill themselves really see suicide as a solution. This is why, women that commit suicide, use same lethal methods used by men, and obviously don’t think about how they will look thereafter. The reason why men have so much bigger suicide rates is that men are not raised to seek help and express emotions, but to “man up”. The end result, is that unlike women, who are likely to seek help, talk about their problems with friends, and “attempt” suicide, before losing all hope, suicidal men fall through the cracks, not seeking help and end up with final “solution”. Our society is in need of change, and seeking help, should not be seen as a sign of weakness.
For our top 10 most suicidal countries in the world, we are using age-standardized suicide rates – number of suicides per 100,000 population, data for the year 2015 from the World Health Organization.
