1,862 suicide deaths in 2023

© ANP / Helène van Rijn
In 2023, 1,862 people took their own lives. That was more than five suicide deaths per day, on average. The suicide rate in the Netherlands has remained stable in recent years, at around 10.4 per hundred thousand inhabitants. It is highest among people aged 40 and older. However, there has been a slight increase in the number of people in their twenties and thirties ending their own lives and a slight drop among people in their fifties and sixties. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports this on the basis of newly released figures.

Suicide rate stable since 2019

Between 1970 and early 1980s, there was an upward trend in the suicide rate. After peaking during the economic recession in 1984, it dropped, and rose again in 2008 at the start of the financial crisis. The number of suicides has been relatively stable since 2013, when population growth and the ageing population are taken into account to enable comparison between the different years.

Largest number of suicides among people aged 40 and older

Suicide is significantly more common among older people than among younger people. Since the 1970s to the 1990s, the suicide rate has increased with age. For years, this figure was highest among people aged 80 and over. However, since the beginning of this century, the number of suicides has been highest among those aged 40 to 59, where it rose most sharply between 2005 and 2013.

Over recent years, variations between age goups have narrowed. The number of suicides among people aged 40 and older has been around 14 per 100 thousand inhabitants since 2015-2018. The suicide rate is lower among those in their twenties and thirties, at 10.6 per hundred thousand in 2023, but it has risen slightly since 2005-2008, particularly among people in their twenties.

Men are more than twice as likely as women to end their lives

In 2023, the suicide rate in men (at 14.7 per hundred thousand inhabitants) was more than twice as high as in women (6.2 per hundred thousand). There have been gender differences in suicide rates for some time, but these have widened as the number of suicides among women has fallen more sharply than among men. Gender differences in suicide are the largest among men and women aged 80 and over.

After peaking in the early 1980s, the number of suicides declined among women in all age groups except for teenagers. The situation is different for men: the suicide rate has declined sharply among men aged 60 or older, but in men aged between 20 and 59 in most recent years it has been as high as it was in the 1980s.

3 in 10 people in their twenties die by suicide

Although the suicide rate among people in younger age groups is lower than among those in older age groups, it is a relatively common cause of death, because the death rate among people in those age groups is higher. Thirty-one percent of people in their twenties who died in 2020 to 2022, died by suicide. That share was 17 percent at the beginning of the century, and 9 percent in the 1970s. At that time, traffic accidents were the most common cause of death in young people aged between 20 and 29.

This shift can also be seen among teenagers. While the number of suicides among this group has remained fairly stable over the past 50 years, suicide as a cause of death had increased to 20 percent by 2020-2022. This was mainly because far fewer young people die from other causes of death – traffic accidents in particular.

Are you having suicidal thoughts? Do you need help? Call Suicide Prevention (available 24/7) on 0800-0113 in the Netherlands, or chat online at 113.nl.