Firearm suicides are a major public health concern in many countries, being particularly high in the USA and Greenland, although few studies have examined death rates from these on a global scale.
Recent research, however, has uncovered some sobering facts. From 1990 to 2019, these deaths declined worldwide, but some countries saw an increasing trend: the study found that 31 countries reported escalating statistics in mortality of suicide by firearm.
By 2019, the analysis found that 52,694 of these deaths occurred worldwide, giving an age-standardised mortality rate of 0.65 deaths per 100,000 people. Worldwide, rates were six times higher for men than for women in this year (45,110 deaths in men and 7,584 in women).
The highest firearm suicide rates, for both men and women, were in Greenland and the US, followed by developed nations, including France, Canada, Finland, Switzerland and Norway. Rates were lowest in China, Japan and Singapore.
Yet while these numbers decreased worldwide between 1990 and 2019, with the biggest decreases seen in Singapore, Sri Lanka, Australia and Switzerland, increases were seen in 31 countries, particularly in developing countries, including Jamaica, Venezuela and Egypt. In some countries, such as Afghanistan, rates increased for women but not for men.
Irena Ilic, of the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and colleagues presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE last week.
Tracking and understanding firearm suicide statistics can help inform efforts to reduce deaths, and to improve understanding of this issue, they analysed firearm suicide data for men and women from 204 countries and territories, spanning the period from 1990 to 2019.
Using this data, they calculated age-standardised mortality rates from suicide by firearm; this measurement accounts for variations in firearm suicide mortality rates observed between different age groups and the different proportions of people of different ages making up different countries’ populations.
The authors note that the data used for this study may suffer from incompleteness for some countries, as well as a lack of standardisation of suicide data between countries. Nonetheless, the findings could help inform public health efforts to reduce firearm suicides around the world.
The authors add: “There are large international differences in the mortality patterns of suicide by firearm. Despite the decreasing trends in most of the areas, observed in both sexes and in all age groups, in 31 countries increasing trends in mortality of suicide by firearm were reported.”
Study details
Worldwide suicide mortality trends by firearm (1990–2019): A joinpoint regression analysis
Irena Ilic, Ivana Zivanovic Macuzic, Sanja Kocic, Milena Ilic.
Published in PLOS ONE on 25 May 2022
Abstract
Introduction
Suicide by firearm is a major public health problem in many countries. But, studies that investigated the mortality of suicide by firearm on a global scale are still limited. The aim of this study was to assess the global, regional and national trends in mortality of suicide by firearm from 1990 to 2019.
Method
Mortality data of suicide by firearm was presented using the age-standardised rates (ASRs, expressed per 100,000). Joinpoint regression analysis was used to assess trends of mortality of suicide by firearm: the average annual percent change (AAPC) with the corresponding 95% confidence interval (95%CI) was calculated.
Results
A total of 52,694 (45,110 male and 7584 female) deaths of suicide by firearm were reported worldwide in 2019. The global ASR of suicide by firearm was six-fold higher in males than in females (1.15 per 100,000 and 0.19 per 100,000, respectively), and varied greatly across countries: the highest rates were in Greenland (24.52 per 100,000 and 2.69 per 100,000, respectively) and the United States of America (10.13 per 100,000 and 1.66 per 100,000, respectively), while the lowest rates (0.05 per 100,000 or less) were observed in China, Japan and Singapore. Globally, the mortality of suicide by firearm had a decreasing tendency from 1990 to 2019 in both sexes together (AAPC = -2.0% per year; 95%CI = -2.1 to -1.9).
Conclusion
Decreasing trends in mortality of suicide by firearm were observed in majority of countries across the world, but not in all. Future research should determine more effective ways to further reduce mortality of suicide by firearm.
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