Which country has the lowest suicide rates?

[Mr Rayon]

Which country has the lowest suicide rates in the world?

 

What's the most happiest country out there?

[SMF]

The country that is least likely to record suicides as a cause of death would come out number one. This question might be more answerable if it were restricted to countries that keep good records. Also, how do you define happiness in this context. Someone could argue that having control of ones own life could lead to more happiness. Sorry to mess up an interesting question, but ... SM

[CaptainPanic]

I completely agree with SMF.

 

And anyway, the fine combination of Google and Wikipedia will provide the answer in a matter of seconds.

The keywords I used were [suicide rate country], and the 1st hit is the List of countries by suicide rate of Wikipedia.

Does that answer the 1st question?

[HamsterPower]

I know a statistic from several years ago

that Bangladesh ranked number one for happiness and contentment in their life

 

So i am guessing Bangladesh would also have one of the lowest suicidal rate?

[lemur]

Emile Durkheim, father of structural functional sociology, has a very influential book on suicide where the defining factor was concluded to be social-integration. Specifically, he found that catholics were less likely than protestants to commit suicide and he reasoned that this was due to greater levels of relative social isolation among protestant and/or higher levels of social responsibility and social integration among catholics. I would doubt this would be the only factor, though, for a population as big as an entire national region.

 

I also don't think you can assume suicide is always connected with unhappiness. Durkheim concluded that there were three types of suicide: egoistic, altruistic, and anomic. Anomie is associated with unhappiness because of feelings of confusion or madness as a result of conflicting rules/norms/etc. Egoism and altruism need not generate as much unhappiness. A person who truly believes s/he is going to escape problems may be happy to do so. A person who sees their death as helping a cause or otherwise benefitting others may also feel happy to do so, such as a suicide bomber. Personally, I find it hard to imagine that people can face death without any sense of fear or immanent loss but it may be possible nevertheless.

Edited February 5, 2011 by lemur

[Marat]

I think it is a profound mistake to link unwillingness to commit suicide with happiness. The societies which have the lowest suicide rates, such as the Philippines and Mexico, are not especially happy by any objective measure, given their poverty, lack of the rule of law, low educational opportunities, etc., but they are deeply religious. Having a brain utterly submerged in the revealed truths of some irrational dogma does a lot for preventing people having sufficient critical imagination to attain the degree of existential insight necessary to decide that life is not worth living -- but I doubt that it amounts to providing a 'good' or a truly 'happy' life for these people.

[RussoNorsk]

The happiest country is Finland but they still have a suicide rate of 13.8 although Denmark, the second happiest country, has a much lower suicide rate of 9.2. There will never be a perfect country but try looking for the country where you feel most at home or you feel you can belong. I believe people should look around for where they feel they should be before deciding to take their own life, there can always be a path to that place that they can take. I've rambled on a bit and gone off-topic but that's what I think anyway. I live in a country with a high suicide rate but I was born in another country that is much nicer but I know I can return someday.