Suicide rates

Suicide rate is defined as the number of suicides per 100 thousand in the 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. The standard used in this article is the age distribution for the year 2016.
In the first graph, suicide mortality rates for the years 1970-2016 are converted for each year, so that each year in this series includes the (virtual) figure, as if in that year the age distribution of the population was the same as in 2016. Standardisation takes into consideration the differences in age distribution over the years. This method facilitates comparison and real increases or decreases are visualised. The graph presenting suicide rates for the entire EU is based on the European standard population.

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