A CAMH-led study of national suicide rates in 33 countries in the Americas over the past 20 years has found several key contextual factors associated with national rates of suicide. The authors state that while suicide rates in the rest of the world have been going down in the past two decades, they have been increasing in North, Central and South America, highlighting what they say is an urgent need for more enhanced and targeted suicide prevention efforts.
The study, just published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, is believed to be the first of its kind to examine the impact of specific contextual factors associated with national suicide rates in the Americas. Using public health data from the World Health Organization Global Health Estimates database from 2000 to 2019, the authors found eight population-level factors associated with suicide rates: alcohol use, education inequality, health expenditure, homicide rate, intravenous drug use, number of employed doctors, population density and unemployment rate.
