Something You Should Know About Suicide
Chen Liang
Role: designer/producer
Tools: Illustrator | Javascript
As WHO indicates, over 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, and every 40 seconds one person choose to kill himself/herself. Suicide has become an extremely complex issue, bringing pains to hundreds of thousands of people every year around the world.
Today, we are gonna talk about a story of some suicide phenomenon that people might not be thinking of at the first with the fact of suicide.
Let's begin!
Which Country Has The Highest Suicide Rate?
Below are five countries, can you take a guess about their suicide rate and rank them from the highest to lowest accordingly?
The result is that Russia has the highest suicide rate and followed by South Africa,and the United States. Instead, countries, like China and India, that have the largest population in the world, don’t have such a high suicide rate.
As a global concern, suicide related issues are complicated and yet being well understood. Policies and risk factors differ among countries as well.
A widely accepted claim is about geographical location, where the suicide rate tends to increase as latitudes become higher. The same pattern is observed from the choropleth in general, while exceptions still exist. Specifically, it is alerting that few countries near equator have high suicide rates, i.e. Guyana (0.319 per 1k), Sri Lanka (0.238 per 1k), etc.
The relation of income and socioeconomic status with suicide rates remains unclear. There are high income countries struggling with this developing world problem. For example, Greenland, as a high income country, ranked No.1 highest suicide rate in 2015. Suicide rate in United States is also higher than the global average, though widely considered the most powerful country in the world.
Which Gender Has a Higher Suicide Rate?
Take a guess!
While females more often have suicidal thoughts, the result is the males committing suicide more frequently. However, there are several countries with a contrast phenomenon: females have a higher suicide rate.
The female-male suicide rate ratio is calculated based on: female suicide rate / male suide rate
If the value is higher than 1, meaning the female suicide rate is higher than the male's, vice versa. The auxiliary line represents the global average -0.6.
Unusual Suicide Phenomenon in The United States.
The suicide rates in the United States are very high and the suicide has become a serious national public health issue in the United States. Based on the real statistic, we found three facts that worth pondering about if it has something connected with suicide.
The rate of suicide is the highest in middle-age and older people.
29.0 handles of vodka per person (1 handle of vodka = 300ml of pure alcohol)
The United States is the only country in the world where citizens generally have gun rights.
Which Female And Male Age Groups Have The Highest Suicide Rate?
According to the fact that the rate of suicide is the highest in middle-age and older people. The radar chart displays that males over 75 years old have the highest suicide rate and females in 35 - 54 years old have the highest suicide rate. And both females and males under 14 age have the lowest suicide rate. When the two chart overlap, it also indicates a fact that while females attempt suicide more than males, males commit suicide more often than females.
Which Suicide Methods Do Most Females And Males Choose?
The percentage of suicides attributable to firearms for males in 2015 was 55.6%.
Poisoning was the most common method of suicide for females in 2015, accounting for about one-third (33.2%) of all female suicides, where firearms accounted for 30.1%.
For both females and males, about one in four suicides in 2015 were attributable to suffocation (includes hanging, strangulation, and suffocation).
Is It True That Suicide And Alcohol Consumption Is Highly Correlated?