Suicide Differ Between

Within this general lack of data on causes of death, data on suicides can be especially limited.

One reason is that in some countries, it can be illegal to die by suicide, or “suicide” may not be an available option on a death certificate.9

Another reason is that there are often strong social taboos or legal consequences for suicides. Families and contacts may be unwilling to share information, and officials may be unwilling to declare them as suicides.10

Because of this, suicides tend to be underreported. They may be inaccurately classified under other causes — such as accidents, violence, or deaths of “undetermined intent”.11

Even well-recorded data on causes of death is not always comparable
We’ve seen several reasons why the quality of suicide data can greatly vary from country to country: a lack of vital registries, health professionals, medical records, coroner investigations, or other resources, and social consequences.

Yet another problem that makes comparisons difficult is that the ICD codes used to define causes of death have changed over time.

As the understanding of causes of death has evolved, new editions have been published. It can take years before each country adopts the newest version. This means countries may be using different versions of the ICD at any time.

The chart below shows, for each year, the number of countries that report deaths with a given version of ICD codes.

To address changes in classification over time, researchers try to harmonize data from different ICD versions. This aims to minimize changes in definitions and measurement, but it can be complex, and differences can remain.12