Partly owing to restrictions and the banning of pesticides – alongside overall declines in suicide rates in countries where pesticides were widely used – suicide rates from pesticides have declined in recent years. The issue of pesticide poisoning has, however, received much less attention as a preventable health outcome. As the authors note for context: 14 million is more than the death toll of World War I and approximately half the number killed from HIV/AIDS. Considering the illegality of suicide in several countries, and poor records of rural deaths, this is still likely to be an underestimate. 11 They estimate the total number of lives lost to self-poisoning over the period from 1960 to 2018 to be 14 to 15 million. Just over a decade later, with co-authors Ayanthi Karunarathne, Flemming Konradsen, and Michael Eddleston (2019), David Gunnell attempted to quantify the total number of lives lost to suicide from pesticide poisoning since the agricultural Green Revolution. 9 Research by David Gunnell and his co-authors estimated that in 1990s and early 2000s, as much as 30% of suicides globally were the result of pesticide poisoning – most in low-to-middle income countries. One of the most common methods of suicide is deliberate poisoning from pesticides. This map shows the number of annual suicide deaths from firearms across the world. Related chart – number of suicide deaths from firearms. This means the number of suicide deaths by firearm greatly outnumber those from homicide: 60% of firearm deaths in the US are from suicides. The number of homicides by firearm in the same year was 14,452. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide similar estimates: 23,854 deaths in 2017. The Global Burden of Disease study estimates that over 24,000 died from firearm suicide in the United States in 2017. In the UK, for example, this rate is more than 30 times lower. What stands out clearly is the very high firearm suicide rate in the United States – at over 6 deaths per 100,000 it’s more than ten times greater than many countries across Europe. In the map here we see differences in the suicide rate from firearms across the world it is expressed as the number of suicide deaths per 100,000 individuals in a given population. 7 But they play a much larger role in some countries. They are responsible for approximately 8% of global suicide deaths. This chart shows the breakdown of annual suicide deaths by broad age category.įirearms are one of the most common suicide methods globally. Related chart – number of deaths from suicide by age group. In the interactive chart you can view data for any country or region using the “change country” toggle. And actually, suicides globally follow a standard pattern of the older the age group, the higher the death rate. Globally, suicide rates are actually highest in people aged 70 years and older. These rates are given as the number of suicide deaths per 100,000 people in a given demographic. In the chart here we see suicide rates broken down by age group. The number of suicides are high, but lower than other causes. We see this we we look at causes of deaths in people aged 70 years and older: most die from cardiovascular diseases, cancers, dementia and respiratory diseases. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in young people.īut this does not necessarily mean suicide is more likely to occur in young people than old – it’s largely a reflection of the fact that older populations also die from many other causes. Suicide is more common than homicide across most countries in the world – often as much as ten to twenty times higher.
Around twice as many die from suicide as from homicide. This makes it one of the leading causes of death globally. In the chart we see that the Global Burden of Disease study – alongside the World Health Organization – estimates that close to 800,000 people die from suicide each year. This chart is shown for the global total, but can be explored for any country or region using the “change country” toggle. 6 These estimates of the annual number of deaths by cause are shown here. The Global Burden of Disease is a major global study on the causes of death and disease published in the medical journal The Lancet. 4 Due to the stigma associated with suicide – and the fact that it is illegal in some countries – this figure is also likely to be an underestimate, with some suicides being classified as unintentional injuries.
Globally, close to 800,000 people die from suicide every year.
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