Change points in Australian suicide rates: Trends from 2000 to 2022

There is concern that suicides in Australia have been increasing, especially among young women. Our aim was to describe the long-term trends in suicide rates, identifying any change points among all suicides and among age-sex population groups.

We extracted annual Australian suicide data from 2000 to 2022 from the General Record of Incidence of Mortality. We used join point regression to model change points in age-standardised suicide rates over time for the total population, males, females and for eight age-sex strata.

Age-standardised population suicide rates declined by 4.4% per year (95% confidence interval: -6.1 to -2.6) between 2000 and 2005 and then rose by 2.0% per year until 2018 (95% confidence interval: 1.4 to 2.5). No change was observed after this. Similar patterns were observed for males and females. When disaggregated by age and sex, a more complex picture emerged. Suicides declined in the early part of the century for some groups but not others. Most age-sex groups experienced an increase in suicides from the mid-to-late 2000s. Suicides declined between 2020 and 2022 for 15- to 24-year-old men by 16.0% per year (95% confidence interval: -24.0 to -7.4). In all other age-sex groups, suicides either plateaued or continued to rise.

The broad trends in suicides observed in the total population and in males and females mask more complex patterns occurring in some age and sex groups. Understanding these long-term patterns is critical to informing interventions to reduce suicide.