Engagement with death registration and cause-of-death reporting to strengthen suicide statistics

Suicide mortality rate is an indicator for Target 3.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The number of deaths by suicide globally was estimated at 703,000 by the World Health Organization and at 759,000 by the Global Burden of Disease Study in 2019 (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation [IHME], 2024; World Health Organization, 2021). These numbers are “estimates” because of the lack of availability and the poor quality of data on suicide deaths in many countries. Monitoring many of the SDGs, including suicide mortality rate, depends on the availability of continuous and detailed mortality statistics by age, sex, and cause of death that only civil registration systems can provide (Mills et al., 2017). With three quarters of global suicide deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries and with the majority of these countries having poor-quality mortality data, the implications for tracking suicide mortality are significant (Mikkelsen et al. 2023; Snowdon & Choi, 2020).