Age- and sex-patterns of suicide trends in Europe: 1990-2022 comparative analysis of official WHO mortality data

Understanding how suicide rates vary across age, sex, and geography is essential to designing effective prevention strategies. We examined long-term trends in suicide mortality across European countries over three decades, with a focus on age-specific trajectories.

Using the WHO mortality database, we computed annual sex- and age-specific suicide rates (10-14 to 85+ age groups) from 1990 to 2022, for the most populous European countries, and aggregated rates for the EU-27 and four geographical areas (North, West, South, and Centre-East Europe). We also calculated percentage differences across four time periods (1990-1994, 2000-2004, 2010-2014, and 2020-2022), according to data availability.

Suicide rates increased with age, peaking in older individuals (85+) in most countries (e.g., 82.0/100,000 in France in 2020-2022, 77.1/100,000 in Germany among males, in 2020), except in the UK and Northern Europe, where rates peaked at middle age (∼22/100,000 at 45-49, in 2020). EU-27 suicide rates in 2020 ranged from 5.5/100,000 (age 15-19) to 58.2/100,000 (85+) among males, and from 2.6 (15-19) to 8.6/100,000 (85+) among females. Male suicide rates were 3 to 8 times higher than female rates across all ages. While overall rates declined since 1990 in most countries, youth suicide increased after 2010 in Western (e.g., +12%, girls 15-19), Southern (+24.5%, girls 15-19), and Northern (+44%, girls 15-19 and 20-24) Europe. Rates among young and middle-aged adults recently rose in Spain, the UK, and Northern Europe, while they declined in Eastern Europe after the 1990s.

Despite overall declines, our findings highlight marked heterogeneity in sex- and age-specific trends in suicide mortality across Europe. These patterns call for age-tailored prevention strategies that address evolving psychosocial stressors and structural determinants across the lifespan.