Talk:List of countries by suicide rate

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The map is outdated and still uses the erroneous Indian source figures.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.

Cleanup needed

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)

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.

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)

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 Phillipines 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)

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)

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)