The number of suicide deaths per 100 thousand population. The method of standardisation is applied to compare different years: figures referring to a particular year are converted to the other (standardised) year on the basis of age and gender. In the first graph of this news release, suicide mortality rates for the years 1970-2015 are converted for each year, so that each year in this period includes the (virtual) figure, as if in that year age distribution was the same as in 2015. Standardisation takes into consideration the differences in age distribution over the years and facilitates comparison. Real increases or decreases are visualised. The standard used in this article is the age distribution for the year 2015.
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