The total suicide rate in Europe, in that period, registered a decrease of almost 20%, going from 20 deaths per 100,000 people in 2011 to 16 per 100,000 in 2019.
Suicide is considered a serious public health problem since it causes nearly 900,000 deaths each year worldwide. Globally in 2019, 10.7 people in 100,000 died by suicide. Psychiatric disorders are related to an overwhelming proportion of these cases. In recent years and on the occasion of the Covid 19 pandemic, in which suicides due to depression increased, several interventions and specific action plans for suicide prevention have been implemented in several European countries. According to the recorded data, this has served to show a downward trend in reported suicide rates in Europe as a whole, despite those registered between mid-2020 and 2022.
This is confirmed by a recent study that has been presented in the framework of the European Congress of Psychiatry, which was recently held in Paris (France). Specifically, the findings show that death rates from this cause have decreased in 15 countries and have stabilized in other States, while Turkey is the country that shows a significant increase, and, on the opposite side, Lithuania, which previously had the highest suicide rate in Europe, showed the biggest drop in suicides.
For their part, the 22 countries that have not shown significant changes in suicide rates from 2011 to 2019 were: Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia , Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, United Kingdom, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania and Ukraine.
efficient measures
The objective of this work was to analyze the epidemiological trends of suicide mortality rates in Europe. Annual national statistics on suicide death rates derived from public Eurostat databases from 2011 to 2019 for 38 European countries were analyzed. The suicide mortality rate per year/100,000 inhabitants was estimated. Linear regression models were used to study temporal trends in suicide mortality.
“This work confirms that suicide rates continued to fall, or at worst remained stable across Europe in the period from 2011 to 2019. Psychiatric disorders are linked to an overwhelming proportion of these cases. In recent years, several specific interventions and action plans for suicide prevention have been implemented in several European countries, and we believe that these could have had an impact on trends.“, explained one of the researchers, Dr. Anna Gimenez, from the University of Barcelona.
“As countries deal differently with reducing the burden of mental disorders, it is interesting to know which measures are efficient and actually translate into something as crucial as a decrease in the suicide death rate. Therefore, this European study is very interesting, since it shows that there are great heterogeneities between countries and that, for a relatively large number of countries, it is possible to reduce the number of deaths by suicide per year”, pointed out in this regard, prof. Philip Gorwood, former president of the European Psychiatric Association.
As found in the study, all European countries have agreed to work with the World Health Organization (WHO) to implement suicide reduction measures, including: limiting access to the means of suicide (eg pesticides , firearms, certain medications); engage with the media to report suicide responsibly; promotion of social-emotional skills for life in adolescents; and identificationfromearly n, evaluationfromny ongoing management of anyone affected by suicidal behavior or tendencies, among other measures. L.D.B./M.T.T. (SyM)