The World Health Organization aims to reduce suicide rates by a third by 2030.

Suicide remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, according to a new WHO report Suicide worldwide in 2019.

The new research found that every year, more people die as a result of suicide than HIV, malaria or breast cancer, or war and homicide. In 2019, more than 700,000 people died by suicide worldwide: one in every 100 deaths.

Among young people aged 15–29, suicide was the fourth leading cause of death after road injury, tuberculosis and interpersonal violence.

More than twice as many males die due to suicide as females (12.6 per 100,000 males compared with 5.4 per 100,000 females). Suicide rates among men are generally higher in high-income countries (16.5 per 100,000).

Globally, the suicide rate is decreasing but in the Americas, it is going up.

Suicide rates fell in the 20 years between 2000 and 2019, with the global rate decreasing by 36 per cent.

But in the Americas, rates increased by 17 per cent in the same period.

Meanwhile, a British charity found that more than 220 nurses across the UK tried to end their life during the pandemic, reports Nursing Times.

The Laura Hyde Foundation said that, according to its own investigations, at least 226 nurses across all settings had attempted suicide between 1 April 2020 to 30 April 2021.