I agree, especially if people are comparing stats across countries without an understanding of how those stats are created. Are the numbers used age-standardised? If not you're going to see higher rates in countries with an older population. Are they using the same definition for death by suicide?
> Rates are very low, statistically speaking.
Rates for the US and for Japan are high. Suicide is a mostly preventable death. Suicide is most common among people who are 40 and older, so it takes people well before they'd die otherwise. Suicide has a large impact on survivors (eg, relatives of the deceased) -- it significantly increases their risk of dying by suicide and it degrades their quality of life.
We need to pay more attention to suicide, even if people think the rates are low.
For example, despite Japan's slightly higher suicide rate of 14.3/100,000, the rate of depression is the US is 4X higher than Japan's %2 [2].
If one were to to consider some sort of absurd comparative value judgement about culture, they should address the following:
The difference in suicide rate between US and Japan is 6/1,000,000 (with Japan higher).
The difference in depression is ~50,000/1,000,000 (with US higher).
IF you had to pick between the two, which would you take?
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression.... https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-psy...