9 September 2016

Jakub Marian: Suicide rates by country in Europe

People from Nordic countries have a reputation for being suicidal, but the data by WHO (World Health Organization) from 2012 show that this is more of an urban legend than an actual fact (although there is a little bit of truth in it in the case of Finland). As the following map shows, if any part of Europe should have a reputation for being suicidal, it should be Eastern Europe.

Note that the data by WHO are age-adjusted, which makes comparisons among countries more reliable. This means that the figures shown are not the real suicide rates but rather theoretical suicide rates if every country had the same age composition. The reason to do that is, roughly speaking, that the likelihood of committing suicide increases with age, so the crude suicide rate would would be lower in countries with lower average life expectancy.

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