More than one in 100 deaths worldwide is due to suicide, said the World Health Organization on Tuesday, which asks for urgent actions to stop a crisis of mental health crises among young people, especially.
WHO said that, although global suicide rates had fallen a bit in recent years, progress in the fight against the problem was too slow.
In 2021, the last year for which the data were available, it is estimated that 727,000 suicides worldwide, said the United Nations Health Agency.
“Worldwide, suicide represents more than one in 100 deaths, and for each death, there are 20 suicide attempts,” said Devora Kestel, interim director of the Non -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Trans -Transmissible WTO Department.
Those suicides “affected innumerable lives and livelihoods, since friends, caregivers and loved ones were forced to deal with unimaginable difficulties,” he told reporters.
The WHO World WHO WFO WHO report stressed that suicide remains a main cause of death among young people among geographies and socio -economic contexts.
In 2021, it was the second main cause of death for girls and women aged 15 to 29, and the third main cause of men in the same age category, he found.
Despite a global decrease of 35 percent in the suicide rate adjusted to age between 2000 and 2021, the world is still below its objective: instead of reducing one third directed in suicide rates between 2015 and 2030, the current progress suggests that only a 12PC decrease will be reached, according to the WHO.
‘Stagnation’
Decreases in all regions were observed, except in the Americas, where the suicide rate increased by 17 percent in the same period.
Almost three quarters of all suicides take place in low -income countries, where the majority of the world population lives.
Although the richest countries have a higher suicide rate, as a proportion of the population, it is difficult to compare since they also tend to have better data available than low -income countries, the WHO pointed out.
The agency warned that, although suicide rates have slowly decreased, the prevalence of mental disorders such as anxiety and depression has been swelling.
“Between 2011 and 2021, the number of people living with mental disorders increased faster than the world’s population,” the report said.
According to the latest findings, more than one billion people live with mental health disorders.
WHO expressed a particular concern for the growing anguish of mental health among young people.
While there is likely to be a long line of drivers behind the increase, Mark van Ommeren, head of the WHO Mental Health Unit, said: “The two main hypotheses are social networks and the impact of Covid pandemic.”
In this context, those who expressed alarm with a “stagnation” in mental health investment worldwide, with an average expense of the remaining mental health government in only two percent of total health budgets, unchanged since 2017.
Worldwide, he found that only nine percent of people with depression receive treatment.
“Transforming mental health services is one of the most pressing public health challenges,” said Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement.