Which country has the highest suicide rate? from Onur Türk's blog

Have you ever thought about why people commit suicide? Do you think women or men commit the most suicides in the world? Today we will discuss the subject of suicide.

In 2003, Lithuania had a staggering suicide rate of 42 per 100,000. That makes 1,500 people in total. More than all road traffic deaths and twice as many as 20 years ago.

The top seven suicide rates are all Baltic or former Soviet Union countries

. Internationally, suicides in Lithuania are six times higher than in Britain, five times higher than in the United States and three times the global average. Interestingly, although no one knows why, seven of the top ten suicide rates are all Baltic or former Soviet Union countries. Perhaps that's why Lithuania also has the highest number of neurologists.

The most suicidal people in the world, including the Baltics, are rural men (young and old). This makes sense: anyone who has spent time toiling in the fields; alcohol, loneliness, debt, the weather and the inability to ask for help (psychologists call it the "desperate male" syndrome) combined with firearms and dangerous chemicals can lead to deadly consequences.

Female suicide rates are higher in China and southern India

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. The exceptions to this are China and southern India, where rural women are at higher risk: suicide rates are 30 and 148 per 100,000, respectively. In China, this is thought to be because young brides are abandoned by their husbands who go to the cities to work soon after marriage. In India, a third of teenage suicides are the result of these girls immolating themselves.

Suicide is generally on the rise. A million people kill themselves every year, or one suicide every forty seconds. That's half of all violent deaths: more people are now committing suicide than are killed in wars.

The Swedish myth

Sweden, on the other hand, is no longer even in the top 20, plagued by the phrase "it's so boring, everyone kills themselves there."

The precise historical basis for the "Swedish suicide" myth has been lost in the chaos of post-war reconstruction, but most Swedes blame US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61), who used Sweden's (then) high suicide rate to discredit the genial and dangerously anti-capitalist egalitarianism of Swedish social democracy.