A suicide takes place somewhere around the world every 40 seconds, or nearly one million a year, and the rate looks set to surge over the next two decades. international health experts said on Wednesday.
Although men in their sixties -- retirement age -- are by far most likely to die at their own hand, the numbers among younger men between 15 and 29 are rising, largely because of availability of guns, the experts told a news conference.
“Suicide is a major public health problem and accounts for 1.5 percent of the total cost of disease to world society,” said Jose Bertolote, mental health specialist at the U.N.’s World Health Organization (WHO).
“But it is largely preventable if the public is made more aware of the problem and governments show the political will to tackle it,” said Lars Mehlum, President of the Paris-based International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP).
Mehlum, professor of psychology at Oslo University in Norway, said studies in many countries showed that restrictions on the accessibility of firearms, especially to young people, brought reductions in the number of successful suicides.
“Guns are the most lethal instrument of suicide. Few people survive attempts to shoot themselves,” he added. But there was resistance in some countries, especially the United States, to reduce the number in circulation.
The two were speaking in advance of the IASP’S World Suicide Prevention Day, to be marked globally on Friday with campaigning to raise awareness of the problem and how it can be tackled.
Ex-communist states hit
Although up-to-date detailed national figures from all around the world were not available, according to WHO officials, former communist states -- Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Latvia and Hungary -- had the highest rates.
In largely Catholic and rural Lithuania, some 42 people in every 100,000 were estimated to have committed suicide in the year 2000, 40 per 100,000 in Estonia, and nearly 38 in Russia.
The next five were Sri Lanka, ex-Soviet Kazakhstan and Belarus, Slovenia and Finland, according to figures for the year 2000 issued by the Geneva-based Organization.
Mehlum said the high rates in the Baltic region and Russia could be partly explained by the social turmoil caused by the transition from state-run economies with job stability to open market systems, and partly by longer historical trends.
Alcoholism, a cause of the depression that leads to suicide, is traditionally strong in Russia and its Baltic neighbors, and restrictions on sale of strong drink -- as shown by a now-abandoned campaign in the last years of the old Soviet Union -- also help reduce the rates, Mehlum said.
In number terms, China -- where, in contrast to the rest of the world, there are more women suicides than men -- had most with 195,000, a rate of 16 for every 100,000 people. India came next with 87,000, a rate of 9.7, and then Russia with 52,500.
The United States was fourth with 31,000 in the year 2000. But its rate of nearly 12 in 100,000 put it at 38th in the overall league for completed, or successful, suicides per head of the population.
Mehlum said suicides among women in the Chinese countryside were very high. The most common means was drinking widely used and highly toxic pesticides, many of which are banned in richer countries, and more careful storage would cut the death rate.
