By UCA News reporter
BASED on age and gender, nearly 30 percent of people hospitalized in Japan following suicide attempts are women in their 20s, according to a report by the nation’s first suicide attempt data tracking system.
Among 1,987 attempted suicides recorded between December 2022 and December 2023, women in their 20s stood at 28 percent (570 people) followed by people in their 30s at 334 (around 17 percent).
The Japanese Society for Emergency Medicine (JSEM) released the report after compiling data gathered from a tracking system for people admitted to hospital after suicide attempts, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Nov 26.
The system tracks cases of patients who were taken by ambulance to hospitals or emergency centers following an attempted suicide or self-harm.
The JSEM created the reporting system, collected, and analyzed the data with support from the Japan Suicide Countermeasures Promotion Center (JSCP), a group authorized by Japan’s health ministry.
The first of its kind in Japan, the ongoing reporting system began operating in 2022. Among the 304 critical care centers in the country, 57 were participating in the system as of December last year.
Yasufumi Miyake, a professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Teikyo University School of Medicine, expressed hope that more medical institutions would join the system.
“I hope more medical institutions will participate in our program in the years to come because access to more cases will allow us to analyze them by region and timeline,” said Miyake, who played a leading role in designing the system.
Miyake expressed hope that their “efforts will, in the future, help provide assistance to those who have attempted suicide and help develop suicide prevention measures.”
The JSEM report indicated that among the 1,987 patients, women accounted for the most cases at 1,254 (around 63 percent). Men made up about 37 percent (733 individuals).
The report also analyzed the common methods used to attempt suicide.
A drug overdose was the most common means of attempted suicide or self-harm used by 297 men, (40 percent), and 858 women (68 percent).
The report also said that 1,571 (79 percent) of all the patients taken to the emergency centers were hospitalized, while 237 others (12 percent) returned home.
More than 70 percent, or around 1,391 patients went on to receive specialized care. This includes those who were referred to a psychiatric ward from the emergency department, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
The establishment of a system to track suicide attempts in Japan is a recent development.
The World Health Organization has been calling on countries to establish systems to collect and manage data on suicide attempts because previous suicide attempts are considered a key risk factor for further attempts, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
The health ministry said in its White Paper on Suicide Prevention that about 20 percent of people who commit suicide had attempted to do so in the past. – UCA News
