The world has seen a decrease in suicides over the past 30 years

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-08-18 19:00

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The rate of suicide has decreased globally since 1990, according to an international analysis of mortality data from the World Health Organization spanning 102 countries. The researchers estimate the global suicide rate was 10.33 per 100,000 people in 1990, dropping to 7.24 in 2021. Suicide rates declined in both men and women, they say, with the male suicide rate still much higher worldwide. Patterns varied considerably between regions, and in the three Oceania countries studied; Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, suicide rates appear to have declined from the 90s into the late 2000s, before beginning to increase.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Mental Health

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Kyung Hee University College of Medicine, South Korea

Funder: This research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (RS-2024–00460379 to S.W.) and an Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (RS-2024–00509257, Global AI Frontier Lab to D.K.Y.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation or writing of the report.

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