Is it possible to eliminate suicide?

In 2008, Sweden’s then center-right coalition government announced a Vision Zero approach to suicide prevention. “No one should have to end up in such a vulnerable situation where the only perceived way out is suicide,” the plan stated. “The government’s vision is that no one should have to take their own life.” The government summarized the national campaign in a nine-point program with broad strategies like reducing “alcohol consumption in the general population and in high-risk groups” and harnessing “medical, psychological, and psychosocial measures.” These strategies have had some concrete effects. For instance, the goal of “reducing access to means and methods for committing suicide” has altered Swedish cityscapes, leading to initiatives like mounting fences along bridges to discourage people from jumping off of them.

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But so far, there’s little evidence that the program has achieved measurable success in eliminating suicides or even driving down the suicide rate. Around 1,400 to 1,500 people kill themselves every year in Sweden, a country with a population of 9.6 million. The suicide rate was declining for several decades prior to the 2000s, when the rateplateaued at roughly 20 suicides per 100,000 citizens aged 15 and above. (Suicide is an especially touchy subject in Sweden; a government website debunks the perception that “Swedes are suicidal,” noting that the country “ranks outside the world’s top 40” for suicides per capita and tracing the myth to Dwight Eisenhower claiming that the Swedish welfare system had spawned “sin, nudity, drunkenness and suicide.”) Sweden witnessed its lowest suicide rate since 1980 in 2011, when 1,378 people killed themselves. But that number then rose to 1,600 in 2013. Today, suicide is the most common cause of death for Swedish men and women aged 15 to 24. In the 15-to-44 age group, suicide is the most common cause of death among men and the second-most common cause of death among women.

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