Age- and sex-patterns of suicide trends in Europe: 1990–2022 comparative analysis of official WHO mortality data

Background. Understanding how suicide rates vary across age, sex, and geography is essential to designing effective prevention strategies. We examined long-term trends in suicide mortality across European countries over three decades, with a focus on age-specific trajectories. Methods. Using the WHO mortality database, we computed annual sex- and age-specific suicide rates (10–14 to 85+ age groups) from 1990 to 2022, for the most populous European countries, and aggregated rates for the EU-27 and four geographical areas (North, West, South, and Centre-East Europe). We also calculated percentage differences across four time periods (1990–1994, 2000–2004, 2010–2014, and 2020–2022), according to data availability. Results. Suicide rates increased with age, peaking in older individuals (85+) in most countries (e.g., 82.0/100,000 in France in 2020–2022, 77.1/100,000 in Germany among males, in 2020), except in the UK and Northern Europe, where rates peaked at middle age (~22/100,000 at 45–49, in 2020). EU-27 suicide rates in 2020 ranged from 5.5/100,000 (age 15–19) to 58.2/100,000 (85+) among males, and from 2.6 (15–19) to 8.6/100,000 (85+) among females. Male suicide rates were 3 to 8 times higher than female rates across all ages. While overall rates declined since 1990 in most countries, youth suicide increased after 2010 in Western (e.g., +12%, girls 15–19), Southern (+24.5%, girls 15–19), and Northern (+44%, girls 15–19 and 20–24) Europe. Rates among young and middle-aged adults recently rose in Spain, the UK, and Northern Europe, while they declined in Eastern Europe after the 1990s. Conclusions. Despite overall declines, our findings highlight marked heterogeneity in sex- and age-specific trends in suicide mortality across Europe. These patterns call for age-tailored prevention strategies that address evolving psychosocial stressors and structural determinants across the lifespan.