According to recent research from Our World in Data, southern Africa has some of the highest suicide rates worldwide.
The information is from 2019, before the Covid-19 epidemic brought about the end of the world. Lesotho had an overall suicide death rate of 87.5, Eswatini had a rate of 40.5, and Zimbabwe came in at number seven with 23.6 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, closely followed by South Africa with 23.5. The Central African Republic completes the top 10 with 23 deaths, followed by Mozambique in ninth place with 23.2 deaths.
Nigeria has the greatest rate of suicides with the use of firearms in Africa, with 458 deaths per 100,000 people. South Africa is next, with 397 deaths per 100,000 people, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 395, Ethiopia with 340, and Tanzania with 203.
According to Our World in Data, the main risk factors for suicide include “variations in underlying mental health and treatment, personal and financial stress, restrictions on the means of suicide, [as well as] recognition and awareness of suicide.”
According to the paper, the conclusions were drawn on death certificate data from 2019 that were “classified under death codes for ‘intentional self-harm’ in the International Classification of Diseases”.
However, the researchers noted that a “low share” of fatalities in Africa and South Asia were recorded as suicides, suggesting that the published data may not be entirely accurate.
The survey states that men are, on average, two times more likely than women to die by suicide in both low- and high-income countries.
The report read:
Males are more than twice as likely as females to commit suicide (12.6 per 100 000 against 5.4 per 100 000 respectively).
Men in Ghana were found to be 10.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide in Africa, with Namibian men coming in second at 7.6 times the rate.
In Mozambique, men were found to be 5.1 times more likely than women to commit suicide, compared to 4.1 times for South African men.
In Zimbabwe, men were 2.8 times more likely to kill themselves than women, in Botswana, 2.8 times more probable, and in Lesotho, men were twice as likely.
