Eurostat: Two Bulgarians Commit Suicide Per Day

On average, two Bulgarians per day take their own lives, as in 2015 the number of suicides in Bulgaria was 682, of which 523 men and 159 women, show data from Eurostat's suicide analysis on the Old Continent for the year in question. This means that 9 Bulgarians per 100,000 people took their lives alone in 2015, with an EU average of 11 per 100,000.

The number of Bulgarians who committed suicide has been decreasing over the years, compared with 714 in 2014, and the peak was in 2011 and 2012, when  800 and 811 Bulgarians killed themselves respectively according to data from the National Center for Public Health and Analyzes (NCPHA), quoted by BTA.

Last year NCPHA worked on the project "Improved mental health services", whose main goal is to reduce the number of suicides in Bulgaria by about 10 per cent.

The project is supported by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism and the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area, as it is mainly working to raise awareness in society about the anxiety and depression that underpin suicide attempts.

Annually, about 3000 Bulgarians try to take their own lives as the ratio of unsuccessful attempts to the successful ones is approximately 4:1.

Nearly half of suicide attempts, as well as the successful ones (about 45 percent), are due to family conflicts, according to experts from the NCFPH.

A second leading reason for the Bulgarians to make an attempt to take their own lives is severe mental disorders - about 12 per cent of suicides. Next: heartbreak - 8 percent of cases; severe physical suffering - 7 per cent; severe financial difficulties - 5 per cent. Only 1-2 percent of the suicides in our country are because people lost their work.

There are more than 56,000 committed suicides in the EU in 2015, accounting for about 1 percent of all deaths in the EU - over 5 million.

Most suicides per capita are recorded in Latvia - 30 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Following are Slovenia - 21 cases, Lithuania and Hungary - 19 cases per 100,000 others.

The lowest share of registered suicides per capita is registered in Cyprus - 4 per 100,000, Greece - 5 per 100,000 and Italy - 6 per 100,000.

In absolute terms, the highest number of suicides was recorded in Germany (10 200) and France (9 200), followed by Poland (5 400), the United Kingdom (4 700), Italy and Spain - 3 600 suicides.

The statistics of our neighbors is quite different: in Greece there are 529 suicides (5 in 100 thousand), in Romania - 2 225 /11 in 100 thousand/, in Serbia - 1 064 /15 per 100 thousand/ and in Turkey - 1 532 suicides - or 2 per 100,000, according to European Statistics.

Overall, more men in the EU commit suicide - almost 8 out of 10 suicides - refer to men and only 20 percent to women. Another characteristic of suicides in the EU is the fact that about 30 percent of them are between the ages of 45 and 60, or every third suicide person in the EU was potentially at the height of their lives and in working age, Eurostat reports.

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