Suicide rate doubled in seven years: young women suffer increasing distress

Although the suicide rate in France had been decreasing since the 1980s, it started to rise again in 2018 and continued to climb in 2021 and 2022. The report from the Directorate for Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees) published on Tuesday, February 25, points the finger at the Covid-19 pandemic , which has "accelerated and amplified previous trends."

In 2022, 9,200 people committed suicide, bringing the crude suicide rate to 13.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 13.1 in 2020 and 13 in 2021.

The Ministry of Health body highlights in particular the "growing malaise of young women" in recent years, and describes the situation as "alarming". The suicide rate doubled between 2015 and 2022 among women under 25. And there has been "an unprecedented increase in hospitalizations for self-inflicted acts among adolescent girls and young women" since 2017, which includes suicide attempts and non-suicidal self-mutilations such as scarification.

This increase was observed as early as 2016, then accelerated from 2020 and has persisted since. Around 516 young women aged 15 to 19 out of 100,000 were hospitalized in 2023 for self-inflicted acts. This is an increase of 46% compared to 2017 and a rate more than four times higher than that observed among men.

In 2022, nearly a quarter of teenage girls in France reported having had suicidal thoughts during the year and around 5% said they had attempted suicide that led them to hospital during their life, according to the survey on health and consumption during the defense and citizenship day (ESCAPAD), cited in the report.

The Drees puts forward several hypotheses to explain the gendered nature of the phenomenon, such as the sexist and sexual violence to which teenage girls are exposed or the "gender injunctions" they face on social networks, including stereotypical beauty standards and the sexualization of female bodies.

The statistics service notes a "gender paradox" because while suicide attempts in the general population are significantly more frequent among women, it is men who die most often from suicide. And young women remain the gender and age category with the lowest suicidality.

In 2023, hospitalizations for self-inflicted acts, which are stable overall, have, however, fallen significantly among women aged 30 to 69 and among men aged 30 to 59.

Young women are not the only ones to be the subject of special attention from the Ministry of Health: contrary to what one might think, older people, and especially men, are more at risk of dying from suicide. "Although suicide - more often associated with young people - is not one of the main causes of mortality among our elders (...), they are the ones who die from it the most, among women as well as men," the report states.

Among young people, suicide is the second leading cause of death, but it is also the age group with the lowest rate. The suicide rate among young people is 2.7 per 100,000 for those under 25, compared to 13.3 for the population as a whole. However, this rate increased by almost 40% between 2020 and 2022.

"The suicide rate for people aged 85-94 is 35.2 per 100,000, almost triple the rate measured for the population as a whole," writes the Drees in its press release.

And older men "are by far" the most at-risk population. They are eight times more likely to die from suicide than women, and 25 times more likely than men under 25.

In addition, "their suicide rate increases significantly between 2021 and 2022, going from 77 to 86 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants."

In older men, suicidal behavior generally occurs when they experience a "loss of decision-making power over both their spouse and their daily lives," such as when they enter a nursing home.

For women, however, this could be explained more by "an accumulation of discomfort over a long period of time" with, in particular, the cause of "exhaustion caused by the expectations of their loved ones and an unbearable domestic and family workload, at a time in life when economic and social support is weakening". Or even because of their desire "to accompany their spouse in death".

These figures raise questions "about the malaise of our elders, in a context of an aging population," notes the Drees.