48,370 people died by suicide in the European Union in 2023, but the mortality rate continues to fall and is now below the level recorded a decade ago.
This is the picture painted by the latest Eurostat data (source in Spanish), published to coincide with World Suicide Prevention Day, marked every 10 September to raise awareness of this public-health issue, tackle stigma and promote prevention. Suicide accounted for 1% of all deaths recorded in the EU that year. The standardised rate was 10.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, compared with 10.6 in 2022 and 12.2 in 2013.
Differences between countries remain large. Lithuania recorded the highest rate in the EU, with 18.8 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Slovenia (16.4) and Hungary (16.1). The lowest rates were in Cyprus (3.5), Greece (4.3) and Malta (5.5).
Men accounted for 76.4% of all suicide deaths in the EU. The crude rate was 16.9 per 100,000 men, compared with 5 among women. Mortality also increases with age, reaching 17.3 per 100,000 among people aged 65 and over.
Suicides fall for the third year in a row in Spain
