Talk:List of countries by suicide rate

Singapore Suicide Rate

Something weird is going on with the Singapore entry. It claims our suicide rate is 3.54, but we're placed at #61 between 7.6 and 7.4. I think our statistics are misleading: this article shows that it was at 9.35 in 2009. http://www.healthxchange.com.sg/News/Pages/Rise-in-suicides-among-the-young.aspx — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ng.yisheng (talk • contribs) 12:28, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Greenland Suicide Rate

A recently article featured in Al Jazeera today (10/13/10) describes Greenland as the suicide capital of the world. However, the current information on the page does not even list Greenland in these top 106 countries (based upon WHO reports). Perhaps an update is needed for the information listed on this page. http://blogs.aljazeera.net/europe/2010/09/23/rising-suicide-rate-baffles-greenland —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.95.198.176 (talk) 19:02, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Map

The map is outdated and still uses the erroneous Indian source figures. Will someone good at mapmaking update it? Until then I've reverted it to the previous version. Iggy402 (talk) 20:03, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I updated Australia in the map. Anything else needs to be updated? The map shows India with a rate of 6.5 to 13. The article has figures of 12.2 (male) and 9.1 (female) for India which fits with what the map shows. bamse (talk) 17:16, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Argentina is painted blue and Spain is painted yellow, even if Argentina has a higher rate according to table

Fixed, Argentina is now yellow as well. bamse (talk) 00:36, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

I have updated the map to use greater gradation. It seemed silly to lump together 50% of the countries listed into a single >13 category, when there was clearly greater diversity in there. Whether or not the data on the article is correct is still up for discussion, apparently, but the map at least reflects the article, as of today. Elecmahm (talk) 20:20, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I removed the map because it is incorrect for many countries and does not reflect the article at all. Almost all the countries at first glance appear to be coloured too high. Also I would suggest changing the colour scheme for the lower countries since all those blues are barely indistinguishable. Sbw01f (talk) 22:28, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

It looks like that map displays only male suicide rates, rather than the combined average for the total population. Sbw01f (talk) 22:31, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Seems the map is still there. And still wrong. Removed it until it gets cleaned up.

I have reinstated the map and will update it in the next few days. Jenafalt (talk) 11:17, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, this map is nonsense. Is somebody going to update it? Either that or I suggest it being removed. The way it looks now it is distorting the facts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.25.22.172 (talk) 19:34, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Hey guys, I removed the map now. The image was just wrong. I hope somebody can update it soon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.25.22.172 (talk) 13:14, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup needed

Bug: Numeric columns should be sorted numerically. They are erroneously sorted alphabetically (e.g. 1, 11, 2, 3, 300, 33, 34, 4, ...).

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

Agree it needs work - an interesting way to compare this data is to look at the difference between the male and female rates, I wonder if it would be possible to add an option for displaying that somehow? Paraphrased (talk) 16:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

if the table is being redone it needs a RANK column —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.241.105.207 (talk) 15:02, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

As of November 2010, the "female", "combined", and "year" columns are sorted properly, but the "male" column appears to have slipped through the cracks and is still sorting alphabetically. 91.135.1.212 (talk) 22:45, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how it should be done but I have rearranged the rank (or 'position') according to the suicide rate for the total population. So the order of the 'position' column now correctly matches with the order of the 'total population' column. Areteichi (talk) 07:56, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Now all the columns except "female" sort correctly. -- 72.14.225.129 (talk) 03:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

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)

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)

... WHO is on third base? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.179.221.105 (talk) 17:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

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.

Israel?

I just corrected the suicide rates in Israel and replaced them with the actual numbers from WHO. There was apparently a tendency to exaggerate the numbers in this country by 8 times (approximately 80 out of 100.000 instead of 10.4 out of 100.000 for men) which is quite a big exaggeration/inaccuracy.

NB: To the ones who vandalised this article I suggest you go somewhere else. Wikipedia is not a propaganda website even though some less gifted people may think so. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.60.48.121 (talk) 13:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, there's a lot of people who commit suicide within Israel. Althought they may not necessarily be israelis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.129.35.2 (talk) 09:23, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

just because the vandalism is about Israel doesn't mean it is propaganda. 66.183.59.211 (talk) 05:32, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Currently the page lists the values for Israel at 100,000 out of 100,000, which obviously isn't correct. I'm sure someone thinks they are being hilarious. Could someone who knows the actual data update the page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.177.177.56 (talk) 21:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

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)

• • Well isn't this nice - there's updated information at a slightly different link (but confusingly similar). http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates/en/index.html

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)

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)

I just thought I would point out the numbers given for total suicides/100,000 is calculated incorrectly. Total suicides/100,000 would be male suicides + female suicides. right now it is calculated as male suicides + female suicides /2; that is an average, not a total. -WookieInHeat 16 Nov, 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by WookieInHeat (talk • contribs) 08:28, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

...response by unexperienced wiki user - total suicides per 100000 males AND females is an average of the suicide rate for 100000 males and 100000 females. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.58.57.35 (talk) 11:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Incomparable 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 inaccurate. I think this article should be revised or deleted because there is no way to know how much it can be misleading.

I strongly agree. Non of these numbers can have any meaning. Differing collection methods make this a meta study fallacy. Many cultures are much less open than western cultures to admitting that someone committed suicide. There is also the problem that insurance policies don't always cover - thus many reasons to fib. A huge portion of the world doesn't even have formal death certificates. A case in point - the Philippines leading cause of death is listed as pneumonia - but the truth is it is really TB. TB has a stigma in their culture, so those that even have a death certificate are fraudulent - saving face is much more important in Asian cultures than in the West. No one will admit that a family member has committed suicide in the Philippines. If such a thing was known, no one would marry the siblings.

This data does not need to be comparable to be relevant and important. It would be almost impossible to get statistics for each country for each years as this sort of data is not routinely collected annually in many countries and, as you say, this list does not discuss cultural factors that may mask the true rate. This is a list of official statistics. If you are interested in making an article about individual countries and including the sociological aspects of suicide in a given country/culture then you could start one - e.g. Suicide in the Philippines Jenafalt (talk) 18:32, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

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)

"no reason why suicide rates should vary dramatically over time"? Just look at the Hungary example listed in on the page:

Suicide rate in Hungary (1950-2005)

The table data spreads from 1978 (Honduras) to 2008 (e.g. european countries). Now look what has changed in the world within the last 30 years. The hungarian rate has more than doubled from 1955 to 1985 and see what happend sincs then. Denkbär (talk) 18:26, 4 June 2010 (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)

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)

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)

When do you consider WHO as accurate? Probably when they put U.S. stats in the gutter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.47.121.253 (talk) 23:01, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

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)

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?:

• http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/index.html

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

• http://www.uni-bonn.de/~manfear/html2wiki-tables.php

With this table:

• http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates/en/index.html

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:

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table --Timeshifter 22:34, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

United Kingdom

Definition at the top "The total rate of suicides is based on the total number of suicides divided by the total population" rate = suicides/60million therfore rate*60million = suicides total rate is recorded as 6.9 therfore if the rate is multiplied by 60 million aprox population it will give us a grand total per year The UK has just over 5 months before we are all dead??????? prosuming noone dies of natural causes in which case we will be extinct somewhat quicker — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.26.121.72 (talk) 21:57, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

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)

Scotland's suicide rate is double that of England - should the different UK countries be listed separately? Jenafalt (talk) 12:23, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I found some data from 2007 and it's quite a bit higher than the 2005 data http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1092 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.244.106.137 (talk) 02:22, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Neither the ranking nor the total population figures for UK make sense: Given that male poulation is approx equal to female population, the total population suicide rate should be average of male and female. For most countries this is the case. For UK, mean of 17.7 & 5,4 should be 11.6 this would place UK about rank 37 (equal to canada). In any case, the figure of 9.2 that is given would move UK ranking to 52. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.145.171.120 (talk) 23:18, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

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)

The figures for China (PRC) don't make sense mathematically (19.7% rate for males, 8.0% for females, and 6.6% overall? That's internally inconsistent.), nor do they agree with the information and figures from the Suicide in China article. The article's information is dated (1999), but I attended a lecture by a Chinese suicide expert just last year and I'm not inclined to grant that male suicides have suddenly shot up and outpaced female suicides. The source for this page's figures 1) does not provide any information on male-only or female-only suicide rates, and 2) is a Party publication and can thus expected to vastly underestimate actual rates. 125.39.160.204 (talk) 08:48, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

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)

I have updated the rates using the Eurostat numbers. I might have missed a few countries but I think I covered most of them. I didn't update France because Eurostat indicated that it only includes the metropolitan area. I figured I will just leave the number as it was since it was using non-Eurostat figure anyway. Areteichi (talk) 07:48, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Cyprus

Cyprus has a suicide rate of 2.4/100,000 people which is the lowest in the EU. Please add it. Here are the sources:

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=39756&cat_id=1

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 —Preceding unsigned comment added by WhiteMagick (talk • contribs) 23:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Turkey

Turkey seems to be left off the list. Heroeswithmetaphors (talk) 06:39, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The WHO website has no data on Turkey. ··gracefool☺ 10:51, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

India and China

According to an article[4] in timesofindia, China and India have the highest suicide rates at 99 and 98 per 100,000 respectively. This is incredibly high, and much higher than what this article shows. It says that data is according to a new report by WHO, but I can't find said report anywhere on their website. Anyone have any idea where the full report is so we can update this article? Sbw01f (talk) 23:21, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

RESPONSE: The report cited in the newspaper can be found at http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suiciderates/en/ As you can see, the 99 and 98 figures for China & India respectively are clearly the year of the information, NOT the actual figure. The figures should actually be closer to 13.9 & 10.5 respectively for China and India. Congratulations to the dyslexic Times of India journalist who's responsible for this. - 15:50, 17 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.176.90.244 (talk)

There are about 50 other countries with 99 and 98 as their year, so if that's not just a coincidence it's a pretty stupid mistake for such a credible source. That link you provided is also an old table which hasn't been updated since 2003, the newest data on their website for India (that I can find) is from 2002. Hmm. Sbw01f (talk) 11:24, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

The table may be from 2003 but it states "Most recent year available." Since the Indian article appears erroneous, I've reverted it back. The WHO is a more reliable source for now 66.215.154.89 (talk) 05:15, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Why does the article appear erroneous? It's a reliable source and the WHO hasn't updated in a while. Anyhow, when you do that you're leaving India on top but with smaller numbers, it's messing the list up. Sbw01f (talk) 18:12, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

The suicide rate shooting up to 98 and 99 is clearly bunk. Unless someone can find the WHO source the Indian article cites, we should use the data from the offical WHO statistics.Iggy402 (talk) 20:22, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Disputed

The South African rate was 20% out according to the article it cites (10%, not 30%!), and some of the other figures are being challenged too. The figures here look dubious, and at best are not directly comparable because of wildly differing sources (such as newspaper reports!). Greenman (talk) 21:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

New Discussion

A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Greenland stats require special handling

The table that shows Greenland as the suicide capital of the world is misleading at a minimum and statistically inaccurate as it is currently portrayed in this table. Greenland's population, as listed at http://bank.stat.gl/database/Greenland/Population/Population%20in%20Greenland%20(July)/Population%20in%20Greenland%20(July).asp shows the following data: Population July 1st by time and residence, 2013, Total = 56,483 On July 1st 2013, there where 56,483 inhabitants living in Greenland. Yet this Wiki page table shows Greenland under a statistical table of "Suicide Rate per 100,000". This means that these statistics for Greenland are inaccurate and cannot be directly compared to the suicide rates in countries with populations of more than 100,000. The Greenland statistics either require a special notice, mathematical manipulation and a special notice, or removal from the chart for failure to have the correct sample size of population for the stated comparison.

FURTHERMORE, the statistics on Greenland's suicide rate appear to be incorrect. The suicide rate in 2010 for Greenland was 63 citizens and in 2011 the number was 47. These numbers come from the statistics reporting web site (full URL): http://bank.stat.gl/Dialog/varval.asp?ma=SUELDM1&ti=Manner+of+death+by+manner+of+death%2C+age%2C+place%2C+time+and+sex&path=../Database/Greenland/Health/National%20Board%20of%20Health/&lang=1

This data presented in this correction here call into question the accuracy of the suicide rate table as stated. The table should be revised as soon as possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Psychofasia (talk • contribs) 04:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Error in "Suicides per 100,000 people per year" part.

I'm not sure what the real figure is, but I'm certain that the number is incorrect. If you notice Singapore's suicide rate which is

12.9 7.7 10.3 2006

It meant 1.2 million people in Singapore are suicidal and Singapore is to extinct in 4 years to come since there are only 4.8 million people living in Singapore. Please, anyone kind enough to provide us with the correct figure? :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 119.234.30.23 (talk) 08:02, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you are a bit confused by the figures being used in this article: 12.9 suicides per 100,000 means that out of 100,000 people 12 or so will suicide. It is not 100,000 people multiplied by 12 as you are suggesting. Jenafalt (talk) 16:43, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

South Korea 2009 data

How can there be 2009 data for South Korea if there are still a few months to go??? bamse (talk) 17:12, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

WHO 2008 data

The most recent data from the WHO should be incorporated in the table. bamse (talk) 09:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• I've aimed to do this for some time. I will try and update it next week if possible. Jenafalt (talk) 11:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. bamse (talk) 11:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

The data has now all been checked against the WHO 2008 suicide data. Please note that the 2008 WHO data is not all from that year, but a collation of the most recent data available for each country. The date that is set in brackets after each country is therefore not the date 2008, but the date of the data collected by WHO. Does this make sense? Jenafalt (talk) 20:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

European Commission Data 2009

I am going through and updating all the European countries with European Commission data released in 2009. I am not finished yet. I am up to Cyprus on the Eurostat chart. Jenafalt (talk) 20:21, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

So many unanswered questions!

I am a bit disappointed to find only blunt figures here. While this is all interesting, why aren't there any analyses (with all due citations) of the difference between male and female rates, or of the - just incredibly low - rates of Iran, Haiti, Egypt, etc? To me, these low figures are just an indication of poor (if any) statistical material, not of lower actual rates. --Azurfrog (talk) 20:30, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree. It seems that there are political and cultural issues about it. Beside the poor registration. I guess that within `shame`-cultures (where family is more important rather than the individu itself) family and the state don`t accept a suicidereport, which a doctor can`t report.

I only can conclude now: The more develloped and democratic the state is, the more accurate the reports are. The differences between the develloped states are quite different as well. I`d like to compare my country,the Netherlands with Belgium. I see a huge difference, while culturally and economically the countries won`t differ much from eachother. Which gave me much interest to know more WHY those differences would occur. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.117.96.87 (talk) 14:48, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Update: New WHO 2009 Data (retrieved 2010-06-01)

36 rows have changed, 2 new countries (Maldives and Greneda) added.

All modified and new rows are marked with a comment <!-- New WHO data Jun-2010 --> in the "Country" column.

The figures for Canada seem not to be WHO data, but there was no remark (footnote) about this fact.

See uploaded comparison table (as pdf or OpenOffice.org spread sheet) with an overview of the changes between the old Wikipedia version and the 2009 WHO data.

Here's a short description how i created this table (pages 1-4):

• Wikipedia and WHO data copied and pasted side by side into one spread sheet.
• Rows synchronized due to differences in sort sequence
• Duplicate rows created to fill the gaps
• Added a new column with a 4 digit year number for WHO data
• A conditional format is used to compare the dates (year): red means Wikipedia needs update, green indicates Wikipedia data which is already more recent than WHO data
• Data values that need an update are marked with a yellow background color.

I also notice that the small island nations poorer nations and Islamic nations have a lower rate of suicidesrates.Obviously we have to take into considerations that the availability of records of suicides may not be accurate and not reported. from a cultural and humanistic poit of view tf this observation is true then more research and analysis could be done on why there is less suicides in these little islands,poorer nations and whether the philosophy of Islam has something to do with lower rates of suicides — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.136.80.89 (talk) 03:16, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

The requred "total" values are looked up in all (38) individual WHO-PDF files.

Pages 5-7 show the merged data sorted by the total column. This table was used to update the page markup.

Denkbär (talk) 18:11, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Flawed Data

The method of using multiple sources, and outdated sources, some from questionable sources, is academically unacceptable. The fact that the WHO is using data as far back as 1979 is mind blowing. Furthermore some countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan have been left out for obvious reasons, but brings up the point as to whether they are conservatively using the suicide rates or are they omitting questionable and politically controversial definitions of suicide to include or exclude suicides from terrorist attacks or suicide pacts. I would recommend removing the ranking system all together. That would be like ranking the world's countries using a range of data potentially 30 years a part. They simply should be sorted by ratio. Mkdw^talk 08:29, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I concur that such a list is irrelevant if it mixes figures from totally different - or questionable - origins! And comparing them all boils down to some sort of "original research", imho. --Azurfrog (talk) 11:12, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed BritishWatcher (talk) 13:58, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Fix on flawed data for the second country at the moment (Belarus)

This is no longer the case, please see further.

I guess many people will come up to this page and get a quick figure about what are the countries with most suiciders?

Well, at least the second row (Belarus) contains a big error. I figured out there was some problem because the current data about first 2 rows are:

• 1. Lithuania male 55.9 | female 9.1 | all 30.7
• 2. Belarus male 63.3 | female 10.3 | all 28.3

How can it be that the average 28.3 is smaller than 30.7 but both for males and females the averages are larger? Maybe I'm making a mistake here but I think this is impossible, at least one of the 2 averages for Belarus must be smaller than the averages for Lithuania. Am I wrong?

Anyway I quickly checked the sources of data for Belarus and they come from different sources so clearly they are not comparable.

• Belarus female 10.3 (data for 2003!) is from http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/index.html (as most of the table)
• Belarus male 63.3 (data for 2003!) is from http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/index.html (as most of the table)
• Belarus all 28.3 (data for 2009!) is from http://naviny.by/rubrics/zdorovie/2010/02/26/ic_articles_292_166818/ (in russian, I traslated into English automatically and the article (reliable?) does not present percentages for the subsamples male and female.

So clearly you cannot put in one line percentages coming from different years (and from different sources).

So I put back the numbers from http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/country_reports/en/index.html for Belarus. --phauly (talk) 12:43, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Update on Belarus in 2011

Previous 28.3 number is confirmed here http://www.vitebsk-region.gov.by/ru/actual/suicid_profilakt/den_predotvrash and here http://democraticbelarus.eu/node/9698 . I speak Russian therefore can confirm http://naviny.by/rubrics/zdorovie/2010/02/26/ic_articles_292_166818/ as well (actually they have English version - http://naviny.by/rubrics/english/2010/09/07/ic_news_259_351648/ ). There are even newer numbers at WHO http://www.euro.who.int/en/where-we-work/member-states/belarus/facts-and-figures which correlate nicely both with economical cycle, and all post-Soviet time no1 Lithuania. Keeping 2003 year statistics is completely misleading and unacceptable.

"Updated" figures for Belgium

I see that current data for Belgium is for 1999. There are somewhat more up-to-date numbers available (from 2004), but not through the WHO and only in French/Dutch. See here: http://www.preventionsuicide.be/ressource/enwiki/static/files/Le_Suicide_BELGIQUE__Mode_de_compatibilite_.pdf (the source mentioned there is http://www.iph.fgov.be/epidemio/spma/ which is an official site of the government of Belgium)

Can I use these figures to update the numbers for Belgium? (C.d.rose (talk) 21:04, 13 November 2010 (UTC))

I see no problem. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 22:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Remove false map

That map is clearly false. Do you really think Sweden and other EU-countries have more suicides than, for example USA? We have very good social security here in Sweden. I never have to worry about starving or not have a roof over my head, while at least 50 million people in USA have a lack of social security, health care, etc..

This article must somehow address the fact that in many countries there are strong reasons for reporting a suicide as something else. There are social, religious, insurance policy reason to avoid reporting a suicide as a suicide. In many countries the system for statistics for suicides are flawed or intentionally falsified. Sweden became known for having a lot of suicides because we are a secular country where a suicide is not hidden for religious or social stigmata reasons, and because we were among the few countries which published true statistics already in the 1950's.

I happened to read an article about popular myths about Sweden on an information site about Sweden. Here is an article written by one of the staff of that site:

Frida (Staff blog) June 11, 2010 A sticky myth about Sweden…

Here we go again…Talking to a friend in London on the phone I get the question I have got so many times before “Why do you think so many people in Sweden commit suicide?” It seems quite a few people out there are convinced that not only are we all tall, blonde and blue-eyed (false, false, false), we are also profoundly unhappy and suicidal…So what do these ideas have in common? Correct, they are nonsense!

With regards to the perception about suicidal Swedes, some updated information quoted by Wikipedia shows that Sweden is nowhere near the top of this list; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate In fact, suicide rates have never been very high in Sweden when compared to the top names on that list: please check: http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/365.pdf So where did this pervasive idea connecting Sweden and suicide come from? After doing a bit of digging, it seems that it might have come from the United States: In 1960 (using 1957 data) the New York Times ran an article about suicide in the world. Very few countries reported any statistics at all back then but Sweden did – and Sweden still only made number 6 on the list, behind Switzerland, Finland, Denmark and Austria and Japan in first place.

So Sweden got labeled as the country of the depressed, and it has apparently remained in the subconscious imagination of the world ever since …The question is, what can we do to kill this sticky myth for once and for all?

/Frida

from http://blogs.sweden.se/staffblog/2010/06/11/a-sticky-myth-about-sweden/

it referred to this article, that's how I noticed how totally wrong that map is. It is better to have no map at all than such a false map. Write instead in the article about how and why so many countries publish false statistics, and how the few countries which publish correct statistics seem to have a high rate of suicides.

By the way, that curve from Hungary over 5-6 decades is obviously faulty too, the rate of suicides cannot vary so much over 50-60 years. The extremely low rate in 1954 must be falsified stats, the big hump in the curve later must also be false. Roger491127 (talk) 16:09, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

While Sweden has great services and stuff it isn't all good as it has very dark winters/light summers, and the winter makes people more depressed and suicidal. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:15, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

If you mean that that is the reason for a high suicide rate you are obviously wrong, because we have lower suicide rate than at least 100 other countries. We are used to this from the beginning of our lives, the winter gives us more time to read books and think about things and we can party and have fun 22 hours a day in the summer. This gives us a variation in life which people living closer to the equator do not have. Their lives are the same all year, every year. You could argue that this lack of variation probably makes them very bored, and as they have nothing to look forward to they are more suicidal.

But as we have a lot of electricity and most people spend most their time inside houses they do not care much if it is summer or winter.

Most important though are factors like social security, free health care, a peaceful or violent society, peer pressure or economic pressure to perform or be seen as a total failure.

A poor person in USA who is seen as a failure and who has a gun and nowhere to live and has no health care insurance is probably much more likely to commit suicide than a poor person in Sweden who has not been indoctrinated to be successful and does not own a gun and gets free health care and and gets an apartment and money for food and clothes for free if he cannot afford it himself. You can look at Swedish sports people like Björn Borg who decides to quit when he is 25 and at the top of his career, because he just doesn't feel for it no more. Sports people from poor countries like Kenya keeps on running as long as they can make more money on their sport. The attitude of Swedish people is that they do something only as long as it is fun, there is no need to do something to survive, or to compensate for a poor background, or because they have been programmed to succeed and keep on performing for as long as possible. 50 years ago a Swede, Ingemar Johansson became the champion of the world in heavy-weight boxing, he knocked out Floyd Patterson. But then he relaxed, he had reached his goal, so he did not train as much for the two re-matches against Floyd who trained all he could because as a US-American he could not give up and retire, he was programmed go on fighting until he could not win anymore. Floyd was beaten by Sonny Liston who was beaten by Cassius Clay. I could give you hundreds of similar Swedish sports careers, people who reach the top of the world in their field, stay there for a few years and then lose interest. It is the same for Swedish singers or actors, people who could have continued for decades lose interest and start doing something else, because there is no pressure to continue to fight for as long as you can. As a Swede you know that you can do what you like, you will never starve or be without somewhere to live or be without health care. There is no reason to commit suicide, unless you are very drunk or very sick, then you can jump from a bridge or hang yourself, because we do not own handguns.

A lot of Swedes own high-powered rifles, just like the people in Canada, but they use them for the yearly moose-hunt, not to kill other people or themselves. I remember the film made by Michael? Moore, about guns in USA and Canada. He asked people in the streets in Canada why they didn't kill each other like US-Americans. The answer he got was: We use our rifles for hunting. The murder rate, and probably also the suicide rate in Canada is more than ten times lower than in USA. There should be a strong correlation between murder rate, handgun ownership and suicide. Roger491127 (talk) 22:01, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

An article has REAL problems when you can find inconsistencies in the article itself (map and data don't match) and even bigger problems when you check Wiki and find a third set of numbers. How about someone go out and get some numbers that make sense. Hint: You will not get accurate numbers from any official government source except (maybe) the US where the fractionation of authority forces the National spreadsheet to balance (usually).Aaaronsmith (talk) 00:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Quite a rant. swedes would have you believe sweden is a paradise or utopia and Americans live in hell. BTW it's "American" not US-American, swede! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.32.1.231 (talk) 14:15, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I have lived in Sweden my entire life and I have personally lost 4 close friends (from different backgrounds) due to suicide. Its very hard to fit in in Sweden if you are not the average Joe. The state also have a very close look at you at all times. You can become depressed quite easy. That plus the long dark winters doesnt do you any favours. If anything I think Swedens numbers are actually higher then listed here. The things Frida writes about above is the major reason why Sweden are unable to improve in many things, eg thinking swedes are best at everything, well we are not far from it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.130.209.116 (talk) 18:26, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Socrates

I think that an image of the death of Socrates is not a good image for this website. I don't think Socrates' death can be properly called suicide. Thanks. user: guillermogp --114.45.232.12 (talk) 04:09, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

This article creates a false impression

The impression given is that suicide is far more common in countries that have a more advanced system of actually finding out data about who commits suicide. If you wanted to find out how common suicide was in Chad or Niger or Mali, for example, you would have no idea because these countries are too poor to even begin to gather such statistics. Thus the whole thing is heavily weighted towards countries that have the ability to gather the data.--X sprainpraxisL (talk) 23:21, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing you can do about that. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 06:56, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Table Doesn't Rank Correctly

For example, if you try ordering the table by female suicide rate, biggest first, then the countries scoring 9.0 will be at the top, but the ones with 11.0 will be in the middle. Obviously the table is not handling double and single figures correctly. Does anyone know how to fix this? GM Pink Elephant (talk) 09:27, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Wrong

The figures for Jordan and France seem to be wrong. Those for Mainland China are out of numerical order. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.109.117 (talk) 14:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

So fix it?--Mark v1.0 (talk) 23:58, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

New Zealand - Higher than WHO data?

The article says that the suicide rate is 13.2 per 100,000 people. However, this news article says that the rate is more than 500 per 100,000 people: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10831455

How can there be such a large difference? This would make New Zealand the country with the highest suicide rate by a large margin. 130.123.104.22 (talk) 07:02, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

In my experience the article is full of mistakes, much of which result from long-term vandalism. Check the WHO data to see what the real number is, and if it's different, please update the article. —Psychonaut (talk) 07:07, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

You need to read the nzherald article again. The New Zealand suicide rate is not expressed per 100,000 but as a total. The population is around 4.4 million so you need to divide total suicides by 44 to get the rate per 100,000.

What is the point of average?

Why is there an "average" rate ? As a measure it doesn't make sense, the Eurostat data correctly reports the _total_ number which is the sensible measure, where sources don't differentiate they report the total number of suicides divided by the population, computing the average for EU countries rather that the compound rate gives a false impression of the data I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Riffraff (talk • contribs) 22:27, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

No data for Taiwan?

Any idea why there is no data for Taiwan? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 15:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

What happened with gender rates?

  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.136.95.122 (talk) 02:34, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

You're right, what happened? Wow, this table needs to be seriously cleaned up...Supersaiyen312 (talk) 08:47, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Rank?

What's rank in this case and how does it work? What's the point with column that doesn't seem to work? Sweden is for example rank 90 - what does this mean and does it in any way relate to the figures? And who made the ranking? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.230.21.79 (talk) 07:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Suicide Bombers

Does this article count suicide bombers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.91.12.227 (talk) 16:30, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Vandal Travelbybus

Can something be done about the vandalism on this article please? Look at the user Travelbybus' Talk page and you'll know what I mean. He seems to be persistent. Supersaiyen312 (talk) 08:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, there's an edit war... :( Supersaiyen312 (talk) 09:12, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually Travelbybus is right about the numbers, but should have explained better. The 54.6 number is male suicide rate, and 31.6 is average. The year was misleading, too. Fixed as of source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.71.135.27 (talk) 20:21, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

How do you know that was a "male" suicide rate though? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Supersaiyen312 (talk • contribs) 20:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I read the clear labels on the graph, and translated the words into english. To clear things up, I updated the table to reflect all three numbers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.71.135.27 (talk) 20:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

But that doesn't make sense. Since when did Lithuania's rate go down? Supersaiyen312 (talk) 21:16, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

What doesn't make sense is to assume that the number 54.6 was EVER the correct average suicide rate. The 2013-01-05 edits by 24.18.40.149 removed a massive amount of numbers from the table. As no reasoning was given, that looks like the real vandalism. Next step was an erroneous 2013-02-10 20:11 edit by 158.129.68.173 replacing the correct number with 45.6; a typo and a misreading of the table. On 2013-02-18 07:42, 15.227.185.71 fixed the typo without realising that the number was bad. In the next edit, 78.56.149.67 fixed the erroneous reading, which you chose to revert on 2013-03-13, 02:06. That misguided action was quickly fixed by 84.55.13.49 (without explanation), and then you started the war by repeatedly insisting that the wrong number was to be trusted. QED.

I'd suggest for someone to repair the damage done on 2013-01-05. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.71.135.27 (talk) 13:52, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, I saw the edit by 15.227.185.71 which said "Fixed typo on Lithuanian suicide rate, was 45.6, but reference has 54.6." and then 78.56.149.67 changed it without explanation, that's why. They're also contradicting previous edits. Oh well, I don't care anymore. Supersaiyen312 (talk) 23:58, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

Hong Kong's row removal

On 15'th of April, Hong Kong's entry was removed from the table by IP 46.7.236.155, stating that Hong Kong isn't a country, and row 25 blanked. Now either that row needs to be refilled again, or removed altogether and numbering continue afterwards from 25. Khaled Khalil (talk) 13:38, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Sri Lanka Suicide Rate

Hi guys, I updated the info on the table for Sri Lanka based on www.sljol.info/index.php/SLJPSYC/article/download/5131/4100‎ - though i though the table would automatically adjust its rankings and position. Sorry, but I don't know the wiki syntax enough to make that happen.