Nearly one-third of suicides in China are by old people

ChinaDec 18th 2021 edition
Old and sad
Nearly one-third of suicides in China are by old people
It can be lonely when your child has moved to a city


Dec 18th 2021






As china ages, worries are mounting about the mental health of its elderly population. Globally, suicide rates among old people tend to be higher than average. In China this is especially true. People there aged 70 and above kill themselves at more than four times the rate of the general population, compared with around a quarter more in America. Loneliness and inadequate health care are among the main reasons.

It is not all bad news. In the 1990s China’s suicide rate was among the highest in the world. Fatal self-harm was strikingly common among young women in the countryside, who had easy access to lethal pesticides. But in the past 20 years, China’s rate has declined more than any other country’s, mainly as a result of stricter controls on those chemicals and migration to cities, where such poisons are even harder to obtain. In 2019 it was nine per 100,000, compared with 14 in America and 19 in Japan.