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The suicide rate in Mexico has been increasing since 2000, and in 2013 the rate was up to five out 100,000 inhabitants, the National Institute of Statistics (INEGI) said Thursday. The institute said that in that period the number of suicides climbed almost115 percent.
In 2013, 5,909 people committed suicide, which represented 1 percent of all deaths in the country. The INEGI said suicide was the fourteenth most common cause of death in Mexico. This was about 8 percent higher than in 2012 when 5,549 suicides were reported.
The statistics office also said that suicide is more common among men, with the rate among males at 8.1 per 100,000, while among women it is 1.7 per 100,000.
Of the almost 6,000 suicides reported in 2013, 81.7 percent were committed by men and 18.2 percent by women.
The statistics office did not explain why more men were committing suicide than women.
The INEGI said that 40.8 percent of the suicides were committed by youths between the ages of 15 and 29, which translates to a rate of 7.5 suicides per 100,000.
In other disturbing details, the INEGI said that the main methods of suicide is by choking, strangling or suffocation. These methods represent 77.3 of the suicide cases. And the use of a firearm was used by males in 10.9 percent of the cases, while women use poison as a method of suicide in 21.8 percent of the cases.
Also, 74 percent of all suicides were committed at home.
Over half of the people who committed suicide in 2013 were in a permanent relationship. However, 39.8 of the males that took their own lives were single, while 43.7 percent of the women were not in a relationship.
About 30 percent of those who committed suicide were unemployed, the INEGI added. But, there was a contrast when it came to work by gender, as 73.3 of males that committed suicide had jobs, while 67.1 of the women did not.
Recently, the U.N.’s World Health Organization said that around the globe about 3,000 suicide attempts are registered daily, while in Mexico, that figure is 40.
Mexico’s Health Ministry said that one of 10 suicide attempts result in dealth, placing Mexico in 9th place in a list of 53 countries.
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