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Self-Inflicted Deaths

Map No. 292

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In 2002 there were almost 900,000 self-inflicted deaths (suicides) worldwide. The world average rate is 141 deaths per million people per year. The lowest regional rate is roughly a third of this, at 44 deaths per million people in Northern Africa. The highest regional rate is in Japan, at 245 deaths per million.

Over half the suicides worldwide in 2002 were in China and India; a further 7% were in the Russian Federation and 4% in Japan. The Russian Federation had the second highest rate of suicides; but 7 out of the ten highest suicide rates were in Eastern Europe, Japan was 11th, China 14th and India 27th.

"If I cannot give consent to my own death, then whose body is this? Who owns my life?" Sue Rodriguez, 1992

Territory size shows the proportion of suicides worldwide, that occurred there.

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• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page