User:Tzu-jan Entelechy/Suicide Rates in Canada

Suicide rates in Canada

Canada's incidence of suicide - death caused by intentional self-harm - averaged over the period from 2000 to 2007 for both sexes, were highest in the northern territory of Nunavut, and highest across the country within the age group from 45 to 49 years.

Rate of suicide, all ages, average over 2000-2007, according to province or territory

Age-standardized mortality rate per 100,000 population

Source:

While Canadian males have two periods in their lives when they are most likely to commit suicide - in their late forties, and past the age of ninety - for females there is only one peak period, in their early fifties. The peak male rates are 53% above the average for all ages, while for females, the peak is 72% greater.

Rate of suicide, all Canadians, average over 2000-2007, according to age at death

Age-standardized mortality rate per 100,000 population

Source:

Although Canada ranks 34th-highest overall among 107 nations' suicide rates, Canada's regional rate of 71.0 in Nunavut is nearly double that for the highest-ranking country, Lithuania, with a national rate of 31.5.

With a rate of 86.5 suicides per 100,000 population in 2006, for males over the age of 74 in the Russian Federation, they exceed the Canadian males' rate in a similar age cohort by threefold, however Nunavut males of all ages exceeded the elderly Russian male rate by thirty per cent. During 2000-07, there were between 13 and 25 male suicides recorded in the Nunavut territory, accounting for between 16% and 30% of total annual mortality.

Although early mortality statistics were not collected, during the middle of the twentieth century it was noted that among the Alaskan Inuit,

When a person was no longer able to produce, he had no right to expect continued support [...] This is not to imply a disrespect for the aged [...] It was rather the unnamed child, the child who was not regarded as a member of the society as yet, who was subject to abandonment [...] Only in the direst of circumstances would it have taken place.

During the same period, on Baffin Island which is now part of Canada's Nunavut territory, elderly Eskimo women, with the approval of her family, were in some cases "walled into a snowhut and left to die".

Rates of suicide among the Inuit of the Eastern Arctic rose from around 40 per 100,000 population in 1984 to about 170 in 2002. During 1999-2003, the suicide rate among Nunavut males aged 15 to 19 was estimated to exceed 800 per 100,000 population, compared around 14 for the general Canadian male population in that age group.