Until 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, the suicide trend in Europe was in a downward cave. This is confirmed by a study presented at the European Congress of Psychiatry in Paris which indicates that suicide rates have decreased in 15 countries and stable in others (including France, Spain and the United Kingdom). Only Turkey shows a significant increase.
However, the report collects the suicide rates, as they appear in the European public databases, in 38 European countries between 2011 and 2019, just before the pandemic arrived that totally triggered the number of suicides worldwide.
Only in 2020, in Spain a total of 3,941 people took their lives, the highest number since there are records. Although some experts warn that the figure cannot be related to the effects of the pandemic since, for example, in 2014 the number of deaths by suicide was 3,910, 31 less than in 2020.
EU statistics show that, until the arrival of the pandemic, around 1.1% of all deaths were due to suicide, which means that in the EU an annual average of around 56,000 deaths as a result of suicide, more if all of Europe is considered.
“This work confirms that suicide rates continued to fall, or in the worst case, remained stable across Europe in the period from 2011 to 2019,” writes researcher Anna Gimenez, from the University of Barcelona. According to Gimenez, in recent years, several interventions and specific action plans for suicide prevention have been implemented in several European countries, and “we believe that these could have had an impact on suicide trends.”
The co-investigator, Giovanna Fico, acknowledges in a statement that “of course Covid and the war in Ukraine can affect suicide trends, but in general, the trend in Europe is towards fewer successful suicides.”
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Limit access to the means of suicide (for example, pesticides, firearms, certain medications).
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Interact with the media to responsibly report on suicide.
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Promote social-emotional skills for life in adolescents.
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Early identification, assessment, and ongoing management of anyone affected by suicidal behavior.
However, it reflects that the policies in Europe seem to be bearing fruit. Gimenez comments that, for example, “in the US, suicide rates increased by 36% in the period 2000-2018, before beginning to decline.
Differences in trends from one country to another, of course, reflect local society, but they may also reflect the adoption of measures to prevent suicide in each country. The total suicide rate in Europe (38 countries) went from 20 deaths per 100,000 people in 2011 to 16 per 100,000 in 2019, a drop in deaths by suicide of almost 20% in this period.
In Spain
Soria, with a rate of 14.63 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, is the one that shows the most alarming figures; behind, Lugo (13.72), Huesca (12.12), Asturias (11.98) and Granada (11.97). For their part, the lowest index was registered by Ceuta and Melilla (below 5), Lérida (5.47), Madrid (5.5), Guadalajara (6.11) and Navarra (6.65).