u of the Census, 1991). This rate places the United States in the middle range of countries with respect to suicide (12.0 to 19.9 persons per 100,000 population), along with such countries as Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Germany. Countries with suicide rates lower than 12.0 persons per 100,000 population include Australia, England and Wales, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Scotland, and Spain with the lowest rate of all 4.8 persons per 100,000 population. Those countries with suicide rates of 20.0 persons per 100,000 or higher include Austria, Belgium, Denmark (with a rate of 26.9 persons per 100,000 thousand population, the highest among this group of countries), Finland, France, Japan, and Switzerland. In a class by itself is Hungary, with a suicide rate of 44.1 persons per 100,000 population.
In the United States, the suicide rate varies not only by age group, but also by sex, race (white/black), and geographic region. Geographically, the suicide rates in New England, the Middle Atlantic states (with a rate of 9.1 persons per 100,000 population, the lowest suicide region in the country), and the East North Central states are lower than the national rate of 12.8 persons per 100 thousand population, while the West North Central states, the South Atlantic states, the West South Central states, the Mountain states (with a rate of 18.7 persons per 100 thousand population, the highest suicide region in the country), and the Pacific states are higher than the national rate, and rate for the East South Central states is the same as the national rate (Bureau of the Census, 1991). New Jersey and New York share the lowest state suicide rates (7.6), while the highest state rates are found in Nevada (24.1) and Montana (21.7).
For males in the United States, the suicide rate is 19.3 persons per 100,000 population, while the rate for females is only 5.1 (Bureau of the Census, 1991). The ...