The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that suicide causes one percent of deaths around the world, expressing its regret for the lack of progress made in the face of these cases that constitute one of the main causes of deaths among young people.
“The suicide killed nearly 727 thousand people in 2021 alone,” the current president of the Department of Mental Health of the World Health Organization, Davura Keistle, said during a press conference.
In a new report, the organization indicated that suicide is one of the main causes of deaths among young people in various countries and social and economic contexts.
Despite the global efforts, progress was very slow in achieving the United Nations goal for sustainable development (which was adopted in 2015), which aims to reduce suicide rates by a third by 2030.
Keistle explained that if “the current trend continues, the decline will not exceed 12%” within five years.
Mental health disorders
On the global level, the suicide rate decreased by 35% between 2000 and 2021, and remained stable during the Kofid pandemic despite increasing risk factors, according to the report.
Nearly three quarters (73%) occurs suicides in low and medium -income countries, where the majority of the world’s population lives.
But the World Health Organization has made it clear that high -income countries have suicide rates higher for population.
The organization stated in a statement that suicide is still a maximum result of some mental health disorders.
More than a billion people suffer from these disorders, the most common of which is anxiety and depression, a number that grows at a faster rate than the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization.
The organization expressed a special concern about mental health disorders among young people who have particularly suffered during the Kofid pandemic, and they are more vulnerable to social media.
“The development of mental health services is one of the most urgent public health challenges,” the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanum Guerberesus said in a statement.
Psychological disorders have severe economic consequences, as healthcare costs are high, but there are greater costs that have an indirect nature, especially in terms of productivity loss, according to the World Health Organization that indicates that depression and anxiety alone cost the global economy trillion dollars annually.